Here’s a look at 4 new platforms and why you should consider getting social on these networks.

Triberr

For companies that blog regularly, Triberr is a great solution to get quality visitors to read your blog posts. Triberr does away with the bad and retains all that is good with automation. You basically join a ‘tribe’ of bloggers you like, and tribe members tweet what other members link. It works on the concept of tribe members supporting one another by retweeting each other’s content.

You can moderate the links you are tweeting and have control over the tribes you want to join. Triberr’s biggest appeal is its ability to direct a bigger slice of the online audience to your blog, with help from your tribe who promote it on their Twitter stream. As all members of your tribe are interested in your niche, you have the assurance that quality visitors will visit your site.

Dribbble (with 3 bs)

The web design industry can make the most of a latest offering that goes by the name of ‘Dribble’. The dedicated web design social network caters to designers who want to showcase their work, and seek opinions and feedback from fellow designers. The site is an excellent tool to share your creations with not just people in your industry but the world at large. Dribble also serves as a recruitment platform; it offers you an easy way to find and match candidates with the particular style you are looking for.

Dribble shares a few features with pin-board style content sharing website Pinterest. To feature your designs on the site and be a ‘player’, you need an invite, but you can also be a ‘spectator’ without requiring an invitation. You can also use your favourite projects (“buckets”) to create boards and “comment” on, and “like” them.

Lino It

Lino is a ‘post-it’ note social site that helps you keep track of important tasks and stay organized. It builds on the concept of sticky notes and post-it notes to make task and errand planning easy. There is no limit on the personal boards you can create, and you can access these from any place, your smartphone included. Sharing boards with team members or the site’s public boards apart, you can attach files and post photos and video as well. Lino is a good way to share and organize efficiently.

Yammer

Though Yammer is not exactly very new, many companies are yet to use it to their advantage. It works like your company’s internal Facebook, even resembling the super-popular site in several ways. Easy to use, Yammer offers benefits in key areas such as productivity, team communication, employee engagement, knowledge-sharing and employee onboarding.

Based on your unique needs, you can trial the discussed platforms to seek out their immense potential and keep up with the speed of social.

Author Bio:This is a guest article by ZK who is the co-founder of an Internet Marketing Blog where accomplished writers and bloggers share their tips, strategies and stories regarding social media and latest technology developmens.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

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• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

This is the process I’m following to create ad campaigns on Facebook promoting my advanced SEO book.

If you like this, get a free chapter from my book on advanced SEO! Or get my latest posts by email or RSS!

Toolset:

Images – Royalty free stock ex SXC, plus my own headshots – faces draw eyes so it’s worth starting with those to get a high CTR and low CPC.
Social Ads Manager (SAM) by Brighter Option – bulk ad creation, upload, powerful tracking built in, save targeted interests for reuse, great support by skype and email, cost is % of spend
Pixlr & MS Paint – Cropping, adjusting image brightness and contrast to shout louder, adding text and certain effects. Free! YAAY.
FBAdsToolbox – To add standard effects like image borders in different colors and certain neat image effects like scroll buttons, video play buttons etc. Very affordable at $58/year (save $60+) or $12/mo.
Confessions of an Advertising Man – ad copy guidelines by David Ogilvy. I also want to get Ogilvy on Advertising and my friend Marty Weintraub’s Killer Facebook Ads
Google Website Optimizer (on html, not WordPress) – conversion rate optimization

PreRequesites:
Landing pages set up and ready to be split test in GWO.
I use html/css pages instead of WP for ease of editing and GWO installation, plus max flexibility. If your pages are based on WP, not to worry, you can save the files and then edit the html to add GWO’s javascript code snippets, on which the whole system is based. See the workaround details here.

Step 1: Collect Pics

Browse for useful pics and download new ones to my pc. Useful = Faces, and anything that jumps out at the eyes. I’m looking for contrast, bright colors, faces, action shots, and niche stuff. Ex. of niche: With SEO, I got pics of guys in black hats. (The copy with those ads should say “Outscale Blackhat SEO.”)

Step 2: Make Pics Eye Catching

Go to MS Paint, Pixlr and FBAdsToolbox to tweak the pics so that they pop more, model’s eyes look towards my ad text (right) or towards the center of the screen. (That’s a test I’m running against best practices (which say have eyes look at your Call to Action), based on a hypothesis that if my model can catch their gaze by looking where I expect the user’s eyes to be, that I can boost CTR.

Step 3: Write Campaign & Upload Pics

Upload pics en masse to SAM then choose those I’ll use – aim for max variety so testing has higher impact. Ex.: White woman and black woman, border vs video play button etc. As more experienced campaigners have noted, images matter more than copy on FB, so that’s the bulk of my effort.

(Note: This skips some of the initial setup work you need to do in SAM, such as creating a product, setting revenue levels, creating interest targets and saving them as clusters for reuse etc, because much of that is one-time work.)

SAM takes the different versions of copy, URLs, and images and multiplies them all by each other, as well as by your demographic targets. So if you’ve got 2 titles, 2 body copies, 5 pics, 2 URLs, and 5 demographics, you’ve got 200 ads created. Much easier than trying to do that manually .

Important optimization tip: I recommend duplicating campaigns to target each country separately, because this way you avoid overpaying by bidding high for the US/UK and paying the same price for countries where traffic costs less. It’s worth separating out, depending on your time constraints, from 2000+ people in your target audience, imho. You may want to try this for age and gender as well.

Step 4: Measure and adjust

Monitor results. Reuse copy, images, countries, landing pages, ages and interests that got best CTR and conversion rates. Cut the rest or bid lower on them.

Step 5: Stay patient

Just because you can post an ad in 5 minutes, doesn’t mean that winning at the ads game is fast. It takes time to create everything, set up tracking, split tests etc and then measure and repeat. The more you do it though, the faster and better you get at it because you realize how to move faster, what your better targets are, etc.

If you liked this, get a free chapter from my book on advanced SEO! Or get my latest posts by email or RSS!

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I love Twit Cleaner!

Some of my work recently has involved creating a follow policy as well as helping manage a Twitter account for a software protection company called Wibu, through my job with illuminea (they’re illuminea’s client, not my own).

Anyways, I was going through the people Wibu were following and realized loads of them were irrelevant – based on their bios/descriptions – but that checking for dead accounts, bots etc isn’t easy based on Twitter’s web interface alone.

The problem is that the web interface will only show you a person’s 3 most recent tweets, and that you often need to click through to see each account, one at a time, after seeing the initial three.

(The reason you need to see more is that you’d have to check if this is someone who is self-centered, only tweets based on RSS feeds or otherwise uses Twitter in a way that won’t allow you to build a relationship with them.)

Also, you have to remember to open the user profiles in new tabs. Otherwise, when you click back, you start at the top of your followers list, and may need to wait for the AJAX to load more followers when you scroll down (the “view more followers” function that loads their profiles when you get to the end but without loading a new page) .

So there’s lots of points where the web interface slows you down when trying to prune who you’re following.

Enter TwitCleaner which is a Twitter app that will check all these profiles for common patterns of anti-social behaviour and generate a report for you. From there you can just click user profiles to unfollow.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

For all the people saying that you just need the social media to be a marketing success – 4/10 people are 100% inaccessible to you.

Measuring Use of Social Networking Sites.

Typically, these are older people, like those who still want to print the materials on your site and ask to be mailed brochures.

Like this? Get my latest posts by email or RSS to keep up with the latest news and tactics.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

It’s no secret that editorial links are typically relationship driven, but who has time to build relationships? That’s why we talk at each other in ephemeral tweets that last 140 characters … if you had that kind of lasting power in your relations with your wife, a divorce would not be long in coming!

So I want to share two little time-saver tools to building relationships by making more meaningful investments of time.

The Problem: People share links over Twitter and Facebook a lot more than they do via their blogs, because we’re lazy. Facebook and Twitter make it easy to do, with embedded widgets that let you share from any page on the web – not just when you’re logged in on their sites. That’s a lot nicer than having to go to your site, login, click new post and then finally create the link.

Turns out at some point in the dozens of version updates, WordPress snuck in a feature called Press This. It’s a bookmarklet – aka a button you can drag to your bookmarks bar in your browser – and when clicked from any page on the web will automatically take you to your New Post editor in WP and auto-insert and link the page you were on. Woohoo!

On a similar note, what if you’re collecting lots of URLs for a link roundup? It’s annoying having to edit the html to make each a link. Not to worry, there’s a plugin for that:

Auto-hyperlink URLs

Link out, make friends, watch them reciprocate. Win-win.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Social media generates ROI in the form of networking benefits.

Social media ROI comes from the relationships you build on Twitter, Facebook etc.

Listen to the name – it’s social media. The point is to network, only online. Hence the related term, social media networking.

The benefits you gain from networking:

You attend industry trade shows and cocktails and so on to network. That networking leads to sales, partnerships, job opportunities, recruiting opportunities, increased exposure etc.

Likewise, social media leads in turn to sales, partnerships, jobs etc.

The problem with measuring social media ROI …

…Is that people want to measure social media as a direct response medium, like Google AdWords.

While social media can be a direct response medium, it’s different than paid search or direct mail. Why? It’s different because you first need to build a relationship before converting the prospect.

You wouldn’t respond to a stranger at an industry cocktail approaching you and offering his services. So why should social media be any different?

You need to establish a relationship and only later can you seek to get a response.

It’s for that reason that social media analytics need to measure relationships.

It’s why human resources should measure and manage social media marketing.

It’s for this kind of plainspoken insight [and humility] that you should get my latest posts by email or RSS.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I’ve been digging into online marketing tools and to my chagrin, most want an annual fee (or one time payment usually roughly equivalent). It’s the rise of SAAS…

Email:

MailerLite: Was on Discount from MightyDeals (found via Yoast) for $49/year!! Up to 10K subs… Love this pricing!
Or MailChimp: Free for up to 2K subs, plus very impressive segment-upon-signup options so you can better tailor content and increase open rates. Starting $49/mo thereafter.

I currently have Aweber which so far has been good, and their support’s generally been good – which is very important. I’m mostly interested in switching due to price (mailerlite) and functionality (chimp). Paying $29/mo for service at my # of subs (over 500, under 2k), for the advanced SEO book.

Contact Management / Social Media Analytics

The first two here are relationship-measuring social analytics tools. The latter is a traffic measuring social analytics tool.

I currently have BuzzStream which is pretty sweet. It automatically finds contact info, can track all email contact and Twitter contact too (going forward, non-historical), plus has various link building metrics and social media functions built in too, though personally my orientation is more the link building side. Starting $19/mo.

ConnectedHQ: Contact Management with full historical data and integrations with various social services. Measure and strengthen your relationships so you get more exposure and traffic. $10/mo

The reason ConnectedHQ also appeals to me is because of more integrations (mostly FB, I’m not big on LinkedIn) and historical data for them. Plus it’s affordable, which is great! Strong contrast to so many tools out there where average monthly price for a non-feature-neutered package is $49…

Awe.sm: Traffic analytics focused on social sharing where links are shared via means besides the browser (outlook, tweetdeck etc) and accurately reporting on where Twitter/FB/LinkedIn traffic really originated from, down to the particular tweet! Valuable for optimizing social media campaigns focused on traffic / conversions. Starting $15/mo

VaultPress: Multiple cloud-based backups + security monitoring for WP, by the creators of WP at Automattic. $40/mo and + for service including security. $15 for cloud backups which is basically not worth paying for since existing WP plugins do that.

Or: CodeGuard: Roughly the same idea but not WP specific. Unclear if they provide human support for cleaning bugs and reinstalling. $15/mo — Update: Got CodeGuard!

VisualWebsiteOptimizer: Tempted by their easy WYSIWYG interface… for better CRO testing. GWO’s horrible, sprawling documentation and disorganized forums are also a massive pain to navigate. $49/mo + for a decent package.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

M.-J. Taylor is a moderator on V7N’s forums and has been working in SEO since 1997. She’s recently launched a SEO & social blog and offers services via her site Cyber-Key , focused on the web design and SEO in the Florida Keys.

How did you get involved with V7N?

I was a moderator on WebProWorld and kept hearing about V7N from other members. I checked it out. It wasn’t the most learned forum I’d ever visited, but it was the friendliest. I was made to feel welcome and a “part of.” And I felt I was needed, as well as wanted.

Of course, no one is indispensable on a forum, but I felt I had something to offer there. I started a daily SEO Tips thread and that’s kept me pretty busy.

What advantage do you find in participating on a forum vs a blog community like SEOmoz?

I haven’t experienced SEOMoz, and I have begun to think I should. I think the cost kept me away. My perception is that would have to buy into the tools to be part of the community. But I so respect Rand Fishkin and others I know associate there. It really is a next step for me, perhaps.

You offer clients web design and SEO services. Why do you prefer that over being an affiliate, or creating your own product and marketing it?

I am my own product. *laughs* Really, it was just how my business naturally developed.

I’ve always been a believer in following your bliss, and my discovery of the Internet came at a time when I wasn’t working. I had just moved from Miami to the Florida Keys and the Internet filled a void – people to talk to, and an opportunity to learn. Within a week, I was spending 8 or 10 hours a day online. I loved it! And I still do.

I wasn’t in a big hurry to get a job, but I wanted something to do, and I watched the want ads. When I saw an ad for a webmaster‘s assistant, I knew it was for me. I had the basic skills – I had taught myself HTML to make what I called a vanity page. This was 1997 and it was all simple. HTML was a doddle, and SEO was about meta tags and a title, wasn’t it?

I was developing a skill few had; acquaintances hired me because I was the only person they knew who could make a website for them. I was enthralled with my business because it answered both my right brain inclination to be creative – I like layout a lot. And it challenged my left brain competitive nature.

People often ask about how to attract clients. A more important question is: what tips do you have on closing web design / SEO clients?

This is going to sound arrogant, but I don’t close anyone. People usually come to me because they have seen what I have done for someone else.

And most of the time I don’t take new business. I only take clients that really fit with what I already do, and it’s usually a chemistry that I develop with someone.

For example, I have had a lot of deep sea fishing captains as clients over the years. One of the most recent new clients was someone who approached me years ago and I said no at the time. A couple of years ago we got personally acquainted – he’s my landlord in Key West where I spend the winters now – and when he asked again, I said yes. I’m having fun with his site and part of that is because I care about helping him.

So, I suppose playing hard to get is a good way to hook ‘em.

I will offer this tip; it isn’t about closing, but it is about getting new business. Answer your phone. [Emphasis added] I have always been responsive . I answer the phone when it rings and I reply to emails very promptly.

So many web professionals are overwhelmed – especially the good ones – and they don’t always pick up the phone.

We all lose business when we let it go to voice mail or fail to return messages the same day. You have to make a customer feel they are important to you and that you value their business.

What are some mistakes you made in trying to close sales, when you started selling services?

I took clients I shouldn’t have taken. One of them yelled at me because of what his last webmaster did. I designed the site, and fired client as soon as I could train his staff to maintain the site. I learned the hard way that I have to have good chemistry with the client and I have to want to sell what they are marketing.

How do you differentiate your offering from others’ offerings?

I don’t think about that. I just do what I love and what I know how to do. I don’t believe in the scarcity principle. There is enough business for everyone. Someone will give you money or trade with you for your skills. But you do have to believe in yourself.

I was born blessed, I suppose. My mother made me feel that I could do anything I wanted if I would apply myself. I suppose getting me to apply myself has always been the biggest challenge. That’s why following my bliss is so important. I just started a new blog on my old, circa 2002 website. I am completely energized by this new venture, and I think the poor old site will finally get the update it has so long needed.

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

A friendly business acquaintance of mine, Jean-Julien of Sid Lee, asked this question recently on Quora. I thought I’d answer here for the benefit of my readers.

The question is kind of futile, in my view. It’s the same way many marketing award shows are only aimed at promoting themselves (they charge thousands per submission…). Just as those award shows don’t really pinpoint the best in the country, it would be impossible to answer this question accurately without doing a comprehensive rating… and none of these answers (award shows, surveys, etc) are ever really comprehensive.

How would you measure this? Average revenue made per campaign? For themselves? The client? How/why would people even share that data?

Most entertaining agency? That’s typically what the ad/mktg awards are about, but of course this says nothing of actual ROI. (Yes, social media generates an ROI measured in dollars (PDF). See also this aside from Michelle Blanc on social ROI.)

It’s like how CSS galleries do nothing to promote good user experience and are instead just about pretty visuals.

If you’re looking for a social media agency, interview them with questions and don’t allow yourself to be satisfied with buzzwords. Engagement is great, OK. What does that mean? How do you measure it?

If you’re looking for a social media agency, look for multiple case studies where the client’s metrics for success are the same as your own. [I take for granted that marketing companies obviously only publish case studies of successes.] That way you know they’re experience with achieving your goals.

Liked this post on critical thinking? Get a free chapter from my book on advanced SEO for more.

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• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

This is a guest post by Brian Patterson, a partner at SEO consulting firm MangoCo.

The Google Panda Update hit many webmasters like a freight train, leaving a long line of quality websites as collateral damage.  While the Panda update did have the noble cause of weakening the grip that content farms had on the SERPs, many high-quality, content-rich websites were cleaned from Google in one fail swoop.  To address the outrage found across the blogosphere, Google has provided a list of questions to ask yourself if you want your rankings to return.

From the list of questions Google provided, I’d like to propose 3 cheap solutions that could help get you back in Google’s favor.

1.  Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

I think it is a little ridiculous of Google to even consider this as something to base rankings on, but I won’t get very far arguing with them (I’ll leave that to Aaron Wall).

The question is, what could we possibly do to have Google think the answer for this is ‘yes’ for our website?   Remember, they are doing this via algorithm, so it’d be pretty hard for them to analyze our design or look for other superficial indicators of trust.

However, there are ‘tangible’ items that they can check for to indicate trust, and  what makes the most sense to me is for Google to check for the ‘Verisign Verified’ seal.  It’d be pretty easy for Google to look for this, and if it is there, the website gets the box checked on this question.  At ~$19/month, its a minimal investment if your website was previously making a great deal of money but took a big Panda hit.

2.  Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

This question does have merit, but I really doubt Google’s sophistication to check for deep stylistic and grammar errors. While the built-in Microsoft Word grammar check is ok and probably on par with what Google would be able to do (my speculation), Apple’s built in grammar check is atrocious.

Rather than rely on these built-in tools, my preference of late has become a very comprehensive ‘cloud’ grammar check tool called Grammarly.  This tool grades the grammar of an article, performs comprehensive content reviews, and offers rich suggestions for improving the quality of an article.  At around $10/month, it is well worth the investment and I’m pretty confident it’s much more comprehensive in reviewing content than Google could ever be (because grammar isn’t the space Google operates in full-time).

3.  Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

The recent ranking correlation data gathered and analyzed by SEOmoz is nothing short of shocking. Of all of the metrics they track, Facebook Shares (not ‘Likes’) have the highest correlation to rankings.  Google’s question on ‘sharing’ here, plus this corellation data, leads me to believe that Facebook and other social shares could be a critical signal in the Panda algorithm.  There are hundreds of tools to help in this space, but I’d like to point out a few of my favorites… and the best part is, these are free!

• ShareThis – Put this button at the end of your article.  It’ll give people an opportunity to easily share your content across a number of social and bookmarking sites.
• fbShare.me –  Facebook is making it more difficult to do ‘sharing’ and instead favors their ‘Like’ button.  Sharing on Facebook means that it can show up in another users ‘Top News’, whereas just ‘Liking’ a piece of content will not show up in one of your friend’s ‘Top News’. This handy little widget does all of the work for you to get ‘Share’ on your site.

In addition to these two tools, increasing your overall engagement in social media will ensure that your content constantly stays in people’s various social streams.

So there you have it, 3 tools that can help you beat the Panda update.  Matt Cutts has indicated that the Panda algorithm is not run daily, so it could take some time to bounce back after implementing all of the various changes being suggested.

This is one of the most sweeping updates Google has performed, and sites caught in the cross-fire can expect numerous tweaks and adjustments by Google as time goes by. By focusing on what Google is saying publicly about the update, we can attempt to make educated guesses on how to satisfy the various pieces of the algorithm.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

This interview with David Wallace of SEM Firm SearchRank was part of a series of interviews I ran with prominent members of Sphinn. Note that these were carried out a couple of years ago, and thus are partly dated – but also interesting to see what still holds true and what predictions have come true.

See the full list of previous interviews at the end of this post, for more interviews.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

Traffic to my own site when posts I have authored go hot.

Also, Sphinn has allowed me to come across some really great posts that I might have otherwise missed due to the fact that I cannot add every possible feed to my reader.

Finally, it has allowed me to connect to some new people in the internet marketing industry as a whole.

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

How about two? Getting several stories to the home page which drove traffic to the site and very likely allowed us to pick up some new subscribers and also being able to highlight other people’s posts, especially those that might not get the attention they really deserve.

3) What other social networks do you participate in (Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot)? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

I have pretty much given up on Digg. I have been using Mixx a lot lately and of course submit stuff to Small Business Brief (www.smallbusinessbrief.com) as well. Besides that, I am on Twitter all the time — it is always an open tab next to Bloglines.

As for user names, I typically go by my name (David Wallace or DavidWallace) or my company name (SearchRank). Most often I share content that is either related to search or social media. However on Mixx, I submit a wide variety of content including Christian related topics as well as anything related to Disneyland.

4) What features would you like to see on Sphinn?

Maybe a “Groups” function? It would also be nice to receive email notification when people “stalk” you as with Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.

5) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Inactivity and don’t work to build their networks.

6) Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

Titles attract me. I have the “new Sphinns” as a feed in my reader which is where I most often come across new Sphinn items.

I also tend to return favors. In other words if people submit my stuff to Sphinn or other social media sites, I like to return the favor.

Number three – I am a sucker for humor, things like Matt McGee’s “Reasons Why You Need a Break From SEO” and the like attract me.

7) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

Probably “Authority – people will be most persuaded by you when they see you as having knowledge and credibility on the topic.”

I originally gained exposure by publishing articles on Search Engine Guide and then getting involved in forums such as High Rankings, Search Engine Watch and Small Business Ideas. From the stuff I wrote and the help I offered via forums, people came to see me as a person of authority in my industry.

What is the future of social media?

It is only going to grow. I think we will eventually see social media creep into just about every site in existence, at least those that want to draw repeat traffic.

I think we will also see social media sites drive significant traffic. I am already seeing sites like StumbleUpon and Digg drive more traffic than some of the smaller search engines such as MSN and Ask. Whereas SEO was getting kind of boring, social media has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in online marketing.

The Sphinn Interview series previously featured Tad Chef, Pat Altoft, Sebastian,  Dave Harry, Bob Gladstein, Bill Hartzer and Wiep Knol.

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Earlier in 2010 I had the good fortune to be offered a free review membership at PPCBlog.com in exchange for a review. With the necessary disclosure given, here’s my take on PPC Blog.

For those who don’t know, PPCBlog.com is a ppc coaching forum run by the good folks from SEOBook.com, namely Aaron Wall and his wife Giovanna.

They’re working with longtime PPC pro Geordie Carswell, who is the main admin and answers people’s questions . Geordie has a long history in PPC and it shows.

For instance, Geordie’s shared several different case studies of his own campaigning, including both the successful and unsuccesful. It’s fascinating seeing what works and how it’s done, since you can apply those lessons yourself to your own niche. And conversely, you learn what to avoid. I particularly enjoyed reading about the spectacularly profitable mobile PPC campaign Geordie ran for an affiliate offer.

Regarding questions, I’m happy to say that I had answers within a prompt delay from Geordie and/or others, usually within 1-2 days.

The other community members are also pretty respectful and savvy, which is another benefit. You don’t need to rely just on Geordie for learning, because you’re in a peer group of smart PPC marketers. Partly this is thanks to Aaron and Giovanna’s marketing, focusing on SMBs and ecommerce, rather than the affiliate market typical of other PPC-oriented forums.

For instance, I had the benefit of the community’s feedback on my initial site design for my advanced SEO book, which meant that I knew what content I needed to develop and what to do before launching. In my case, I was too anxious to start and they thankfully held me back by pointing out that at my price point, more info was needed.

Similarly, I got feedback that helped make my dad’s landing pages more credible for the PPC campaign I ran for his dental travel seminar site.

Regarding the learning modules and tools, I have to admit that I was personally less interested in those and hardly spent any time there. The reason is that I’m pretty well read on PPC even though I don’t do it much. So I didn’t want to have to wade through a bunch of stuff I knew to eventually find the premium nuggets. (Hence my preference for the case studies.)

Regarding tools, they’ve got a sweet local keyword list concatenator/generator that comes preloaded with US states and city names, which then expanded to Canada and elsewhere. I believe they also have a massive campaign builder if memory serves.

Some things I’d improve if I were PPC Blog:

- Organize the modules by degree of knowledge. Newb-Intermediate-Advanced. It wasn’t clear what was what initially.
- Offer a way to export select threads and/or the whole forum. Just like buying a book gives me a fixed amount of knowledge, being a member once should give me a permanent copy of the site’s content up until the last time I paid dues.

I asked Aaron about this and his view was that doing this would just facilitate the task of those content thieves who would take his material, publish it elsewhere and wrap the stolen content in ads (and then have a chargeback so it was free). If people want access to the forums again, “they can re-subscribe when they feel they need access again?,” in Aaron’s words. I see where he’s coming from, but I think you should get some record of the content even if it’s metered.

Magazine subscriptions leave you with the magazine after all…

- More guides and case studies around Facebook ads, and other social ads (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn) (Anyone else notice FB ads proliferating for FB ad guides, lately?)

Ongoing payment should be for ongoing learning, not for leasing access to a fixed block of knowledge. Personally, I was tempted to scrape the forum (true of other pay-to-play communities I’ve been a part of, too, like SEOmoz) to compensate but then didn’t for lack of time/patience.

For me, I’ll admit that I didn’t buy a membership when my free gift ended, but not because the quality lacks. I didn’t buy a copy because I hardly manage PPC on Google or Bing, so it’s got limited applicability.

For people who are running PPC campaigns on a regular ongoing basis, PPCBlog.com is definitely worth the money. You get coaching that would cost you an arm and a leg if it was one-on-one (instead of one-to-many as in a forum) and the case studies are fascinating. As time goes on, I’m sure the social advertising content will beef up, and the original tools will continue to grow and develop, as has been the case with SEO Book.

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Recently, Sphinn has changed from a vote-driven (read:clique) system to editor-driven (read:non-social) system. This explains any things that seem out of place. Besides that, this continues our Sphinn Interview series, which previously featured Pat Altoft, Sebastian, and Dave Harry, Bob Gladstein, Bill Hartzer and Wiep Knol.

Tadeusz Szewcyk, aka Tad Chef for short, does German SEO and writes the longstanding and successful SEO 2.0 blog.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

A name and reputation in the global SEO industry. Ability to discuss virtually with industry leaders. Being bookmarked, stumbled and mixxed by people who notice me on Sphinn. Getting authority, topical links. Ego massage.

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

Avatar, networking with other Sphinn users on many different platforms, catchy titles, being provocative without harming people, voting for others.

3) What other social networks do you participate in? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

StumbleUpon – onreact-com, Mixx – onreact.com, Pownce, Blogcatalog

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

Submissions and votes per URL view, report shady SEO directly to Matt Cutts, Sphinn member of the day Entrecard like rotation on Search Engine Land.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [A weak attempt at playing on 'social media' that no one I asked this of understood. = bad joke]

Both

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto, except Tad got this hehe.]
I don’t like postmodern puns. Done them when postmodernism was en vogue and I wanted to be a linguist 15 years ago.

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Focusing on quantity not quality. Focusing on traffic not people. Focusing on traffic not reputation. Being too much about business.

8 ) Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

Art, design, politics.

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

Reciprocation, liking, authority: I had a really tough time on Sphinn to get noticed, none of my first 20 posts went hot.

Only after getting linked, stumbled and being voted for by me people started noticing me. Then they liked me so much I was submitted and voted up on Sphinn with everything, even stuff that was mediocre.

Now this phase is over but I already gained the authority to make people read my stuff at least. So if my submission rocks it will still get hot.

10) What is the future of social media?

Social media will go mainstream for real while the audiences will get scattered around many interconnected platforms.

[Ed: Astonishingly accurate prediction!]

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Recently, Sphinn has changed from a vote-driven (read:clique) system to editor-driven (read:non-social) system. This explains any things that seem out of place. Besides that, this continues our Sphinn Interview series, which previously featured Pat Altoft, Sebastian, and Dave Harry, Bob Gladstein and Wiep Knol.

Bill Hartzer is an expert SEO who also engages in corporate B2B website marketing.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

As an online marketer, it’s important to have a presence in the industry. I believe that by participating on a regular basis in sites like Sphinn you’re building a brand for yourself and your business. It’s not just about getting links or promoting certain blog posts or articles that you feel are important (although that helps, too).

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

The main “element of success” is to participate on a regular basis; it could be either a minute a day, 5 minutes a day, for 5 minutes a week. Just getting into a regular schedule of participating helps a great deal.

3) What other social networks do you participate in? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

There are a lot of other social networks that I participate in, perhaps even hundreds of them.

I believe it’s important to use the same username on all the sites you participate in because you’re not just participating: you’re actually building a brand and an online reputation. I usually use the username bhartzer, and a search at Google will give you some hints about the sites that I participate in on a regular basis.

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

I believe they’ve already taken care of the major issue that I had, which was an ability to report it as spam.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [A weak attempt at playing on 'social media' that no one I asked this of understood. = bad joke]

Huh?

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto, though Bill's answer acutally makes sense!]

Sphinn doctor=Sphammer. No, not really, but if you’re a sphinn doctor then you’re participating quite a bit–which is a good thing.

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes  people make with social media?

The most common mistake that people make with social media I would say is to not use it to get the marketshare of links quickly to an article or blog post. I’ve talked about this before, but it makes a huge difference (organically) if you are the first to get the “marketshare of links” on a subject or topic. The second mistake is most likely submitting your own stuff to social networks; at least if you’re going to do that don’t use a username that’s the same or nearly identical to your domain name or the name of your blog. Sheesh!

8 ) Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

Three non-Sphinn items about me? Well the first would be that I own 32 chickens and 2 roosters. Well, okay that’s not really something that people could use to catch my eye on Sphinn.

I personally don’t mind, though, if someone contacts me and points out a great story on Sphinn. That doesn’t mean I’ll Sphinn it, but if it’s important to you it might be important to me.

Something else that would catch my eye would be if you Sphinn everything that I submit. Oops! Am I allowed to say that here? LOL

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

Who is Cialdini? Just kidding.

Personally, I don’t think that there’s any need to go after those priciples. If you’re honest, you participate regularly in social media, and you point out stories or links that are good, then your friends will trust you by default. Use social media like it’s intended, we all can see right past the spam.

10) What is the future of social media?

There is definitely a big future in social media.

It’s easier now to see it because even the traditional media is beginning (finally) to accept it. We have CNN getting ready to launch iReport.com after having bought that domain name recently.

I find myself using the social media sites not only as marketing tools but to keep up with what’s important in the news. I use Sphinn not only as a marketing tool but also as a way of keeping up with what’s important right now in the online marketing industry.?

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Recently, Sphinn has changed from a vote-driven (read:clique) system to editor-driven (read:non-social) system. This explains any things that seem out of place, as well as Twitter not being mentioned). Besides that, this continues our Sphinn Interview series, which previously featured Bob Gladstein, Pat Altoft, Sebastian, and Dave Harry.

Wiep runs the popular Link Building Blog aka Wiep.net, and co-founded LinkBuilding.nl which you’ll agree is pretty self-explanatory. (It’s part of the inspiration for me to get off my ass and do something with linkbuilding.ca …)

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

Sphinn turned out to be not only a great networking tool, but also the perfect place to find outstanding SEO related info. I subscribed to at least a few dozen RSS feeds from blogs that I came across on Sphinn since the launch in July last year.

The direct traffic to my own blog is a great side effect.

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

I guess that would be passion, dedication and a strange urgent need to
share stuff…

3) What other social networks do you participate in? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

While I try to use as many social media websites as possible, I always find myself struggling to find enough time to do this sufficiently.

I do participate on Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and a few Dutch social websites on a regular basis, though.

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

I’d love to see a “follow this user” option, or something similar. Lots of members submit nothing but excellent stuff, and subscribing to their submissions would make sure that I don’t miss anything of it.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [A weak attempt at playing on 'social media' that no one I asked this of understood. = bad joke]

Not sure what to answer here, could you elaborate a bit more?

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto]

You mean this guy (http://sphinn.com/user/view/profile/login/sphinndr)?

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Submitting stuff that’s not relevant to the community. For example, submitting a serious post about the latest fashion trends in France probably isn’t very interesting for the average Digg community member.

People will consider something that’s not relevant for them to be SPAM quite easily.

Because there are lots of communities that DO like stuff about French fashion trends, I’d recommend focusing on those communities in stead of just submitting your stuff everywhere.

8 ) Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

Do something with guerrilla marketing, graffiti art or football (soccer), and you have my full attention instantly. (Oh, and I hate to disappoint you, but unlike you mentioned in your YOUmoz post, I’m not a big fan of former Spurs player Davids… I’m a big fan of Dennis Bergkamp and Robin van Persie in stead, who happen to play for the Spurs’ rival Arsenal.)

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

That would definitely be Commitment. Participate with passion on a regular basis, and you will get noticed.

10) What is the future of social media?

The future is what you want it to be, since you have influence on social media yourself.

p.s. I pre-scheduled this and am currently on vacation. For more pre-scheduled awesome posts, add my rss feed to your reader!

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• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Recently, Sphinn has changed from a vote-driven (read:clique) system to editor-driven (read:non-social) system. This explains any things that seem out of place. Besides that, this continues our Sphinn Interview series, which previously featured Pat Altoft, Sebastian, and Dave Harry.

Bob Gladstein is the chief boss man (my words) at Raise My Rank, which offers SEO services in Somerville, MA. To thank him for his kindness with this interview, I’ve hotlinked the picture on his about page. ;D

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

It’s gotten me a decent amount of traffic on the rare occasion that I blog about search marketing and submit those posts. For the most part, though, I find that it works well as a news aggregator. If I don’t have time to go through all of the search feeds I subscribe to (which seems to be the case at least half the time), I can at least scan through what’s going on at Sphinn.

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

I’m not sure you can say that I’ve been a success with Sphinn. For one thing, I haven’t been in the top 20 in some time. On top of that, I don’t really use it with personal success as a goal. I see Sphinn for the most part as a place to share and discuss industry news. If it’s a question of getting posts to go hot, I generally only submit stories that I think will be of interest to a lot of people. Often, that’s largely a function of the piece’s author, and I want to stress that I don’t submit those stories with the goal of getting them to go hot. I just think they’ll be interesting to the community at large.

3) What other social networks do you participate in (Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot)? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

I’m a moderator at the High Rankings forum, where I go by qwerty, on StumbleUpon I’m robertik, I’m Gladstein at SEOmoz, on LinkedIn and Facebook I’m Bob Gladstein, and on reddit I’m rgladstein. I’m also rgladstein on Digg, but I rarely log in over there.

High Rankings is really the only place I “work” and that’s only to the extent that I’ve done a lot for my reputation by helping out there.

I don’t really use any of these sites to promote content. I’ve tried that a couple of times on Digg, but that hasn’t worked out too well. For example, a client of mine published a fairly large study a few months ago. I submitted it to Digg, and it was almost completely ignored — maybe two or three diggs. About a month later, Guy Kawasaki wrote about the study (which of course got us a pretty good jump in traffic), so I tried submitting his post to Digg, hoping people would digg it just for name recognition, and that those who clicked through to his site would then follow his link to my client’s. I think that got about five diggs.

Reddit is where I discuss the stuff you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company: religion, politics, etc. (although I often write about that stuff on my blog, too).

LinkedIn has been fairly useful to me, but mostly just in getting in touch with people. An old friend from college joined a couple of weeks ago, so I invited her to join my network. That led to a couple of emails, and it turns out she’s going to be in town for business next week, so we’re going to get together for drinks. Up until the LinkedIn invitation, we hadn’t had any contact at all in over twenty years.

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

I’d like to see who voted a comment up or down.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [A weak attempt at playing on 'social media' that no one I asked this of understood. = bad joke]

Are you asking about my politics and my method for contacting the dead? Can’t I be both?

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto]

I’d say that’s someone who’s skilled at working the system, by building a list of friends they can count on to sphinn their content, writing the kind of content that they know people will jump on, either out of respect, support, or controversy. Basically, it’s someone who is good at using the site as a tool for self-promotion. You could call that gaming the system rather than working it, but I think that would unnecessarily inject the concept of ethics and the question of what the real purpose of Sphinn is. In any case, I would not call myself a Sphinn doctor.

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

I think some people are just too mercenary on social media sites, or they assume that everyone else is as mercenary as they are. I don’t personally see the value in becoming “buddies” with anyone and everyone I see.

Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

Well, non-Sphinn items about myself would probably be deleted from Sphinn if anyone submitted them, but I’m very interested in politics and the arts, particularly film (even though I never find time to go to the theatre anymore).

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

What, do you think I’ve got a marketing degree? I studied English Lit and the History of World Cinema. But I did some quick research on this Cialdini fellow (he didn’t really have an office under the seats of a stadium, did he?), and I’d have to say that, at least in my experience, reciprocation and authority seem to work for me. However, without having read Cialdini’s book, I’m looking at the definitions of the principles in a few different places, and they’re not all the same, so when I say that reciprocation and authority are most important, I’m referring to the definitions of the terms that can be found at http://www.marketingaprivatepractice.com/2006/04/what_it_takes_t.html and not the definitions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Six_.E2.80.9CWeapons_of_Influence.22.

10) What is the future of social media?

I don’t pretend to know, but it’s big. And I find that curious, since for most users, the internet began with walled-in communities like AOL, which disappeared over the years as search grew in importance. Now, those communities are making a comeback. I imagine there’s a growing number of users who rarely venture outside of MySpace of Facebook.

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Those of you familiar with my scratchpad articles know that this is informal, braindump writing.

Yes, the formatting and grammar sucks and it’s in note form.

But the substance will kick your ass across the Channel, Matilda.

Social

Wayne Liew explained that he’s now more focused on using Twitter to build relationships. He noticed a sub 1% CTR on his links, which lead him partly to realize that his follower count was pretty meaningless. It’s engaged followers that matter.

To the same effect, a recent blog post about tweeting = speaking in a void:

It’s unsurprising then that TwitterBFFs (Best Friends Forever) recently came out, showing who you tweet with most. I expect that within 18 months, we’ll have the first true social media analytics.

Selling

“Always be selling” doesn’t mean always be asking 4 the sale. Depends where u are in the funnel.

Socializing, mentioning what u do=selling

Hence Tweeting can = selling. And hence the need for true social media analytics.

These will take TwitterBFFs type technology and help you measure the strength of your relationships and need for followup.

Plugins

Based on some WordPress and Ecommerce SEO strategy I shared, I had a new plugin idea.

Make a plugin that takes selected posts and copies their content into another post, 301s the selected posts URLs, and adds a table of contents and subheaders with the appropriate titles.
You end up with
- an authoritative, in-depth topic page a la Wikipedia; aka linkbait
- more content combinations for SEs to send you longtail traffic on,
- linkjuice being more concentrated in fewer pages, so you rank better as explained here

Another plugin idea: Integrate commenting with facebook and add a little ’3 Benefits of registering’ box – see wireframe sent to indians

Ads

Google’s Display Ad Strategy – From The Horse’s Mouth

http://google360.client.shareholder.com/eventdetail.cfm?eventid=75613

Notes on this.
Majority of publishers in Google Content have opted into running display ads; majority are serving those, not text ads. Unclear if by choice or based on yield optimization.

Need to watch the whole thing…

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Patrick Altoft directs search for Branded3, a Leeds-based full service digital agency. He also runs the popular Blogstorm SEO blog and is a pretty interesting guy to chat to overall! Hit him up if you’re looking for search services in the UK!

We’re continuing a series of interviews I conducted in 2008 with active Sphinners. You might also like to read the interviews with David ‘theGypsy’ Harry and ‘Sebastian‘.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

I use my real name and people now associate my Sphinn profile with my blog. Any bit of publicity helps on the web.

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

1. Use your face as your avatar
2. Use your real name
3. Only submit great stuff

3) What other social networks do you participate in? (E.g. Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot) Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

I use Digg and StumbleUpon and used to be active on Digital Point until it was overrun by to much noise.

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

I would like to be able to subscribe to a feed that tells me when my blog posts get sphunn so I can go vote for them too.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [A weak attempt at humour playing on 'social media'....]

Neither.

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto]

Somebody who can get to the front page of sphinn.

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Submitting content that is blatantly linkbait or content that is full of adverts.

Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

a. Mention my name or blog
b. Write something I’ve never read before
c. Give a real life example of making money from the web

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

I have never heard of Cialdini I’m afraid.

10) What is the future of social media?

Sites will try harder and harder to become spam free and probably ruin themselves while doing it. One persons spam is another persons clever marketing and it is a very tight balance.

Like I said, you might also like to read the interviews with David ‘theGypsy’ Harry and ‘Sebastian‘.

If you want to keep up with future interviews from this series, add my rss feed to your reader. You may also like my advanced SEO book.

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Sebastian is the technical genius and SEO behind Sebastian’s Pamphlets. This warm fellow’s well-known avatar is rather ironic – a crab! We’re continuing the Sphinner interview series that began with Dave ‘theGypsy’ Harry.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

Sphinn is the best aggregator for SEM stuff (stories, links, discussions), ever. Despite the noise on the upcoming pages, Sphinn has all the news that matter. In other words Sphinn is a great time saver, although I didn’t dump my feedreader yet. Also I’ve met nice folks at Sphinn, people I wouldn’t know otherwise. Joining Sphinn was this decade’s best decision (besides moving my WebDev/SEO-pamphlets away from blogspot).

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

Define success. I’m just a user, taking more than I can give back. Thanks to great Sphinners I’m pointed to interesting stuff, bookmark (sphinn) it, and every once in a while I submit a pamphlet and my fellow sphinners honor that with very nicely targeted traffic, thoughtful comments, and sometimes even links. I’ve no sphinny world SEM community domination plans.

3) What other social networks do you participate in (Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot)? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

I’ve spread my red-crab.ico under the “SebastianX” label everywhere, but besides Sphinn I use only Delicious and StumbleUpon as bookmarking tools, and Twitter for gossip and communication. Of course I vote elsewhere for a tiny fee when nicely asked, provided I like the content. I’m not in the social media game. I just use those services when they make sense for me. In my spare time I help out Google with Webmaster support.

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

On the submission form I miss the “bypass the new list” checkbox. Sometimes sphinn+save is not enough to praise an awesome piece, hence an easy way to manage a few dozens user profiles for power-voting would make sense.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [Me trying to be witty and failing miserably.]

I’m an anarchist. My code rules the chaos.

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto.]

All sphinners properly feeding my ego deserve this title. Seriously, I nominate Michelle who keeps things running and makes Sphinn an even better hangout with every update. Having so many attention whores and probloggers in the community we tend to forget the seabees.

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Taking it too seriously.

Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

I won’t sphinn “how to get raped by aliens” items like “new version of MS Visual Studio is out” and crap like that. Titles like “Why TrustRank is way sexier than plain old PageRank”, “Increasing index penetration without abrading link condoms” or “Automating unpenalized paid link gangbangs” get my vote for sure, provided the article is geeky enough and makes sense. You see, sex sells, even to old farts crabs like me.

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

Social Proof. It might be wishful thinking, but I hope that applying a brutal zero-bullshit tolerance in combination with sharing knowledge and experiences can influence people and prevent them from crappy decisions.

10) What is the future of social media?

Getting plastered with so many ads that one can’t find the contents any more.

Thanks Gab!

Like I wrote above – this is part of a series of interviews with Sphinners. They were actually conducted years ago then left to rot in my inbox. Time to get ‘em out!

If you liked this, check out the interview with  Dave ‘theGypsy’ Harry, or get a free chapter from my advanced SEO book.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

While measuring relationships should be the paradigm for social media analytics tools, relationship building is just an intermediate step for any marketing campaign. Ultimately, marketing needs to drive financial metrics found on balance sheets or income statements.

But the ROI you can derive from social media isn’t uniform across communities.
Twitter can increase customer loyalty by enabling you to do customer service online. Yet it’s not as likely to deliver potential RSS subscribers to your site the way Digg or Sphinn can.

As marketers, we tend to forget it when new mediums arise, but goals need to be set before you pick your medium.
And the goals you can set clearly can’t be the same for each community.

Facebook, remarkably, is gradually turning into a direct response marketer’s playground. The ads are typically more suited towards lead gen, but as the search engine gets better, I expect we’ll see successful sales efforts be carried out as well.

Twitter is still a mix of things, as its owners haven’t quite figured out who they want to target, but are happy to grow the platform in the meantime. Those publishing discounts online and who have a certain real-time marketing ability (e.g. the BBQ truck in San Francisco that tweets its new location every day) can benefit, but the ad platform is unsophisticated there, so far.

As to Digg and StumbleUpon, those are very much about relationship building and linkbait. Unless your company is geared towards a young male demographic, the direct response value of participating there is low. (Eg Pampers.)

You need to know what social site you’re on.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.