Click image to read Facebook IPO to Create Jobs

Future of Engagement – Monitoring Social Media on the Eve of the Facebook IPO Launch

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook could be going public within seven days. Murray Newlands’ series The Future of Engagement analyzes how this story spread across social media:

TRACKING TRENDS

Highlights:

• The term “Facebook IPO” was a trend on Twitter less than a day after the WSJ Facebook IPO story went live
• Over half of “Facebook IPO” social media mentions were on Twitter, showing how important the microblogging site is for breaking news.
• In the 24-hour timespan after the WSJ post went live, Twitter’s mentions for that term grew eightyfold – to over 800 posts.

Click the image below to see Alerti’s Social Media Monitoring Graphs for the search Facebook IPO full size:

Graphs by Alerti

Alerti Facebook IPO Graph of Social Media Mentions ~ Click Image to See Full Size

Facebook IPO DELAYED:

• LATEST: Forbes: Facebook IPO $5 Billion
• MSN Bottom Line: Facebook May Delay IPO
• Market Watch: What to Look for in Facebook IPO Filing

NOTE: Watch this space for updated graphs on the Facebook IPO Delay

Click Image for Free Download or to Buy in Paperback

Danny Iny (@DannyIny on Twitter) from Marketing Training Company FirePole Marketing did what all wise people do when confronted with a challenge: find out first what everyone else who has tackled the same situation learned and then build on that.

How to Win Your FREE Paperback Copy of Engagement from Scratch:

So here’s the deal. You tell me why you want a copy of Danny’s book and I’ll send my extra copy to the person who writes the most compelling reason. Here are some tips for you:

You can see by the excerpts in this short video who the contributors are:

Danny took that a step further and compiled everything he had learned himself and from 30+ super community building bloggers into a book to benefit everyone else who wants to know how to build a loyal following from scratch.

Learning from someone else’s experience is a lot smarter than
having to learn everything the hard way by doing it yourself!

He asked each of the contributors this question:

“If you had to start over and build an engaged
audience from scratch, how would you do it?”

His book Engagement from Scratch contains answers from famous bloggers and community builders you already know and many that you don’t. It is well worth reading for the insights you’ll get – and would you believe that the digital version is FREE to download?

Engagement from Scratch FREE Download here.

When I use a book as a reference, a physical copy to keep handy is worth having.  I wrote a recommendation for Danny’s book and he sent me a review copy. Even though I practically live online and read all the time, I still LOVE books.

50% of Profits from Paperback Version Supports NFTE

Danny is wiser than the average marketer because even though he could have just emailed me the digital file he sent me (and probably others) TWO copies of the actual book.

Having it around means I can make notes in it, and curl up with it when I’m giving my eyes a break from the computer monitor. And the extra copy means I can give one away to my readers so THEY can benefit, too.

Don’t Miss How to Win Your FREE Paperback
Copy of Engagement from Scratch – details below!

So here’s the deal. You tell me why you want a copy of Danny’s book and I’ll send my extra copy to the person who writes the most compelling reason. Here are some tips for you:

1. Visit Danny’s site to find out who contributed to Engagement From Scratch.
2. You could check out the testimonials and reviews.
3. Bloggers who write a blog post about Danny’s book and promote it online are more likely to win.
4. But you can leave a comment and promote that. (Click on the date in the comment to get a link if you want to share your comment specifically instead of this post in general.)

I haven’t seen a stamp or a post office in years, so if it weren’t Danny and he wasn’t offering so much to so many I wouldn’t be making this offer.  You’ll get a lot out of the book and I hope you’ll check it out. 

Consider voting for it in the SmallBiz Small Business Book Awards
Voting starts soon – nominations close Tuesday, Jan 31, 2012

Small Business Book Awards Twitter Chat

Anyone who writes and especially who has a book they’re promoting will want to be on the Twitter chat Tuesday night.  Join all our fellow book lovers and favorite blogging collaborators including:

• Anita Campbell from @SmallBizTrends
• @Ileane from @BasicBlogTips
• @mmangen
• @VernessaTaylor @CoachNotesBlog

Book Promotion Twitter Chat
Tuesday night Jan 31, 2012 at 7 EST / 6 CST / 5 MST / 4 PST
To use Tweetchat – the easiest way to participate in a Twitter chat -
use this link >> #bizbookawards twitter chat

Sponsored by JustRetweet
Why You Should Join Just Retweet

It is bound to be lively and interesting – and you will make some exceptional connections.

JustRetweet is giving away 24 hours in the one and only
Featured Site spot AND doubling all credits purchased and
VIP time bought during the chat and for 24 hours after it ends.

You WILL learn a lot from Danny’s book – and when I read it cover to cover I kept waiting for every contributor to recommend what I believe in strongest and KNOW works best. I really thought Kristi Hines (@Kikolani) or Ana Hofman (@AnaTrafficCafe) would talk about it in depth – but they didn’t.

Maybe I can get Danny to include a bonus chapter
from me in his Special Bonuses for EFS Readers.

Before you apply the tips in the book be sure you clearly understand the differences between the types of communities each of the contributors has and decide what kind of community YOU want to grow. There is very little overlap between the types.

If you don’t win or you want it now you can buy your own copy here. As much as you know it pains me, in this case there does not appear to be ANY Amazon alternative for buying Danny’s book (except for online sellers that source through Amazon or Abe books which is owned by Amazon).

If you don’t get it for anything else you need to see the clever
way Danny uses call to action pages throughout the book.

We can not always have what we want and sometimes we can not find alternatives. That does not mean we should ever stop trying. In this case, supporting our fellow authors is more important.

I want to give everyone a fair chance to win their own copy of Danny’s book so entries will be open until Friday, February 17, 2012 midnight CST. If you write a post do drop in and leave a comment here so I’ll be sure to see – and promote – it. (Trackbacks aren’t what they used to be thanks to automated tools that let unethical bloggers and marketers flood our blogs with trackback spam.)

This is a guest post by Manuel Marino where he shares how he has combined using LinkedIn for connections with blogging to build a community of artists helping artists.

Is it possible to merge an artist’s talent with social networking, adding some blogging spice for a perfect mix?

My name is Manuel Marino and I’m a music composer and producer, but I consider myself an all around artist, blessed with many talents, from music to painting, graphics and design.

I have many websites, most important are my weblog about music and arts ManuelMarino.com and my studio homepage MarinoSounds.com.

Why YOU Should Use LinkedIn

From my profiles, the best one is the LinkedIn profile where I have more than 27,000 direct contacts. Is it important?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network
with over 120 million members and growing rapidly.

LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.

For a music professional, this means Heaven.

85% of my projects come from LinkedIn contacts.

I’ve been able to meet online impressive guys like Vince Desi (I consider him a friend) and many other powerful individuals from the video games, music and entertainment worlds.

I use many LinkedIn tools to contact artists all over the world and collaborate with them on music and multimedia projects. You can really feel like a world citizen this way!

IMPORTANCE OF BLOGGING

What about Blogging? Is it more or less important than networking?

If networking is the pillar of the Internet world, blogging
is the way to communicate your ideas inside the networks.

What inspired me initially was the idea to freely surf and read everything about anything. This always fascinated me. I think this is why people love to have many blog feeds to read daily. Next to this idea is the one to freely write interesting articles for the Internet community. Both give a kind of freedom that I never felt before.

This freedom is the foundation of my blog. ManuelMarino.com is about music, arts, philosophy, poetry, independent artists, humanities and freedom. I invite experts and sincere professionals and artists to write articles. I believe very much in freedom, honesty, sincerity and I’m able to feel these when I meet people. There are many good people in the world, but sometimes we are too obsessed by everyday life to understand and find this.

When I write my blog posts – usually my ideas about news, culture and art – sometimes my intuition is what’s behind the post. We need more intuition, people tend to forget the importance of it and uses too much their left brain. (Want to see the right brain in action? Just check my sketch lady, and my 3d works beauty and vampire night).

After you find the right idea, it’s the word of mouth that can make it a success on the Net! Backlinks are even more important, but the two are very related. I’m talking about the natural backlinks from fans and readers and word of mouth can only maximize the effect even more. That’s an awesome connection toward success!

What connects networking to blogging? Freedom. Yes, this amazing freedom feeling the Internet gives. Building an online network of contacts gives you freedom and the ability to “move your mind” in so many projects, countries, cities. You are able to find new traditions and culture.

As an example, I learned important details about Buddhism and oriental culture through a friend in Singapore. We also had much fun playing GO, an oriental board game. Singapore is very far. It’s not easy to reach it through a “real trip”. Internet can help, when distances are so far. The world is just one click away.

I just want to mention a success story that helped me realizing all of this.The mp3.com experience has been very important for me. It showed me the great potential of the Internet and gave me the ability to meet new friends and collaborate with them through the web.

It has been about 12 years ago. Musicians were working together and many projects were born. First Internet radios provided an important community of listeners who were supporting us. We were able to produce albums at no cost to us.  (It was a real innovation in that period). The royalties mp3.com was giving us were fair and honest. I will always be delighted to remember those years.

For the rest of January, obtain your FREE copy of my Audio Mastering Guide and participate in our community to promote your blog or Website and connect with other musicians and artists.

Click Image to go to Feel Tip Top Twitter Search Engine

I recently wrote about How to Increase Conversions By Sharing Pillar Content When Your Audience is Most Receptive and mentioned using the semantic Twitter search engine FeelTipTop and a unique Twitter alert search and respond app iTweetLive.

By using TipTop first to see typical search results for any given keyword phrase you can fine tune what you set up in iTweetLive and greatly reduce the amount of time you’ll spend weeding out searches that were either too general or have too many other meanings.

It is faster to fine-tune your searches first than to
manually review and delete those that did not work later.

iTweetLive Example Setup:

It is often easier to understand when you see a real life example – and understanding is a faster way to be productive with a new tool than trial and error – and that gets you results much faster.

If you are tempted to skip this I encourage you to read on.

I recently set up iTweetLive to promote two valuable school assembly programs offered by DominoTheGreat:

• Read to Succeed program to encourage reading in this Library Blogs post.
• Buddies Not Bullies: his bullying prevention assembly program featured in this bullying statistics post.

By first searching for the word “bullying” in FeelTipTop it is immediately obvious that there are far too many tweets that include that word – most of them from people who are reacting to news or other tweets who would not be in need of a bullying prevention program.

That one insight saves HOURS of
deleting tweets that do not need replies.

FeelTipTop suggests additional keyword phrases that I can test to find just the type of tweets that are worth replying to and eliminate most of the ones that would not be interested.

Additional "Insightful Topics" Suggested by FeelTipTop related to my Bullying Prevention Search - Ignore those not revelant - hone in on the ones that are.

Clicking on any of the suggested words highlights the tweets that contain that word. For example, ‘School’ is highly relevant because anti-bullying programs are most commonly presented in schools as is ‘assembly’.

Clicking on ‘assembly’ pulls out the tweets for ‘bullying prevention assembly’ from the existing results:

FeelTipTop shows which of the results includes Bullying Prevention Assembly

Notice that Tip Top provides you with an important and time-saving web usability feature: breadcrumbs to get back to your previous search.

See the red arrow and text in this image pointing out the Breadcrumbs - All sites and especially ecommerce stores should use these so your visitors know where they are on your site and how to jump back one or several pages to where they were.

By testing each potential search first I am able to hone in on tweets by people who can benefit by knowing about Domino’s anti-bullying program and the excellent statistical data provided by Statista on bullying.

• Bullying Prevention – very targeted
• Bullying Statistics – very high volume of people searching for these who will be very happy to have the statistics in my post

Notice that on the original search screen – which you need to remember can be accessed at any time by clicking the Inputs tab – there is a ‘select city’ dropdown.

If your business wants to reply to geographically targeted tweets this feature could become very useful. We need the developers of Tip Top to let us know what that feature is trying to do? Does it use the location in the Twitter bio or is it looking for locations?

This post explains how to build refined Twitter searches using Tip Top. See part two to be published soon for how to set up iTweetLive using these searches to automate the search process to increase conversions through offering solutions when your target audience WANTS them.

What if you could share just your most important links with influencers you don’t even know yet and have them retweet them to their 1000s or tens of thousands of Twitter followers? You can.

Join us at JustRetweet.com where it is fast and easy to share what we would most like to have retweeted.

Using JustRetweet is the easiest how to get retweeted method.

JustRetweet ~ The Retweeting Site for Influential Bloggers- CLICK THIS IMAGE to GO TO JUSTRETWEET.COM

Why Use JustRetweet?

• Getting started is fast, easy and free.
• When you have more money than time, you can buy more credits to promote your small business, worthy cause, or blog.
• If you have more time than money, you can earn credits by paying it forward = sharing what is most important for others, following them, and checking out Websites and blogs.

The Sites and Blogs You Preview on JustRetweet
May end up being your most important collaborators!

Retweeting Tips:

• Only share your most important landing pages.
• Write compelling tweets that invite JustRetweet users to share them and Twitter users to click on your links.
• Include RELATED hashtags (and additional @usernames if applicable).

IMPORTANT:
Only Retweet tweets and links your followers will be interested in!
Requests go live throughout the day and are NOT pre-screened.
Do report any that you feel are inappropriate for any reason.

NEW FEATURES:

We just added several new features to make JustRetweet even more effective for you and your followers:

• Refer a friend
• Retweet buffering – When you choose ‘Post Later’ your Retweets go out gradually instead of immediately. You can schedule up to 50 retweets to be sent one at a time so they do not flood your Twitter timeline.
• Credit Summary – allows you to see at a glance who retweeted what you have shared, who followed you, website views and how your credits have been spent.

PROHIBITED CONTENT
Do NOT request Retweets of sales pages, get rich quick schemes,
unethical plugins or tools like these trackback spammers like those
commonly seen on Warrior Forum. They will be deleted.

Repeated infractions will result in account deletion.

Quick How to Use JustRetweet Reference:

Refer a friend

1. Log into your JustRetweet account.
2. Click on the Settings Tab.
3. Find your referral link below the navigation bar and above the five blue buttons.
4. lick that link to send an email or send or link to it.
5. 25 credits will be added to your account for each referral you make.

To Request Retweets:

1. Log into your JustRetweet account.
2. Click on the Settings Tab.
3. Click the blue Retweet button (in the center just above the tweet box).
4. Type in your tweet – DO NOT include your Twitter username as it is automatically added for you.
5. Choose how many credits you will offer – the more you offer the higher on the Retweet Exchange your tweet will appear.

RETWEET TIPS:

• Choose different credit amounts to spread your Retweet requests out and get more of them shared.
• To decide how many total credits to allocate multiply how many credits you offered by how many shares you would like. You CAN edit this field to add more credits at any time.
• If you choose a high follower count only Twitter users with that many followers will see your Retweet request. Many times Twitter users with lower numbers of followers actually have more influence with those they follow.

To Earn Credits Retweeting for Others

1. Log into your account.
2. Click the Retweet Exchange Tab
3. Decide which requests you want your Twitter followers to see. If one does not fit for you, click Skip this.
4. When you click Retweet that tweet is immediately sent to your Twitter followers.
5. RECOMMENDED: Use Post Later most of the time so that your retweets are shared gradually.

TWITTER RETWEET TIPS:
How to Use Just Retweet
Ileane’s How to Get More ReTweets Video
Twitter Best Practices

Have questions? Use the contact us link on Just Retweet or send a regular tweet to @GrowMap and @JustRetweetCom to get a reply as soon as your question is seen. We both pop in and out on Twitter all day long. Want a faster answer? Use Skype or IM to reach Gail or use the contact tab on GrowMap.com for more ways to reach her.

WARNING ABOUT COPYCAT RETWEET SITES:

There are numerous sites similar to JustRetweet and at least two copycat sites to be avoided:

• EasyRetweet was created by the programmer originally hired to design the JustRetweet site. Instead of doing the work he built his own site using Valentine’s idea and then tried to get him to pay to be a “partner”. He was wise enough to know partnering with someone unethical will never turn out well.
• WeDoRetweet appears to be a clone of the JustRetweet site parked on a domain registered by the current developer and on the same temporary server as the official site. It is unclear why that site exists, but it looks so similar that it may confuse users of the real site – so remember JustRetweet.com is the correct domain.

None of the other sites has going for them the most important
reason for using JustRetweet ~ our influential collaborators.
JustRetweet attracts the most social media savvy bloggers.

DISCLOSURE: Valentine contacted me when he first launched JustRetweet.com and I agreed to support it and become a half interest partner because I feel the site is beneficial to small businesses and bloggers.  Other bloggers like Ileane @BasicBlogTips also saw the potential in using this particular retweet site. It is a new site and there are challenges to be overcome; however, I will do my best to help Valentine to keep it on track.

Click image to read Why 97% of Prospects Have the WRONG GOALS

Are YOUR small business goals
ineffective or downright useless?

I hope not – but I see this over and over again. Business owners are sold all the wrong goals by people who make a living doing what is easy instead of what actually works.

Probably the majority of agencies and consultants offering services that provide little benefit – if any – to your business really don’t know any better. Others are simply more concerned with making a living than they are with your results.

Examples of Bad Business Goals:

TWITTER: Wanting x number of Twitter followers
is NOT a goal that will convert to sales or leads!

Far too many people are paying to “increase followers by x amount” or “get to x followers” and the easy way that is done is to just follow whoever will follow back. Except for the illusion of importance, how many followers you have is irrelevant.

You should NOT focus on how many followers you have – focus on finding and interacting with followers who are interested in what you to offer! How will having those specific followers or fans achieve your PRIMARY goals?

Your primary goals must be more sales, more clients –
something tangible that will keep your business IN business –
not some fuzzy ego-driven goal to be more ‘famous’.

You must get really clear on what results your actions are intended to produce and then focus on doing only those activities that will eventually – and it does take time – lead to increases in REAL BUSINESS, i.e. sales or leads.

BLOG POSTS

Writing x number of blog posts is
NOT a relevant business goal.

What you expect those blog posts to ACCOMPLISH (more sales? more clients?) is the real goal as I explained in my recent post on Why QUALITY is More Important than Quantity.

Increasing traffic to your blog or site is a weak goal if that traffic is not TARGETED to real people interested in what your business has to offer. What content you create and how you promote it is more important than how many posts you publish.

Create relevant incoming links targeting your best anchor text
while simultaneously offering only the highest quality content.

Doing so increases traffic both from search engines due to
higher search positions AND by attracting real people.

The traffic you don’t drive through publishing less often can more than be made up for by promoting your very best content. See How to Succeed by Sharing QUALITY Content When Others are Most Receptive for exactly what content you should be creating and what to do with it once you have it.

GUEST POSTS

A goal to have x guest posts published is NOT an end in itself.

WHERE you are published is vastly more important. You want to place excellent content where your target audience already is.

What do you want those guest posts to do? Raise awareness? Bring real people to your blog or business? Plant the seeds of relationships with potential customers, influencers, and related businesses?

Many SEOs focus on writing quality content to get published on blogs like this one so they can add a link or two in the bio because they are focused on link building to improve search engine positions.

Place content ABOUT what your business does or
how what you have to offer solves the problems of others
where real people in your target audience will read it.
This is a much better use of your time -
and far more effective for link building as well.

Why do just link building or just content creation
when you can do both at the same time?

At some point common sense must kick in and at least some of us will stop playing these silly link building games. We all know that people write content to get links. What we need to do is be willing to publish content ABOUT products and services we and our readers would actually be interested in!

Do YOU know what you are really trying to achieve?

If you are not sure you need to get some assistance to figure that out – and the sooner the better.  This is such an urgent need that I created a new Small Business Mentoring program. <<< Read more about it at that link.

Those who work with me have almost instant access
to me for quick answers most of my waking hours and
personal one-on-one mentoring in any skills you need.

We will work together to build YOUR comprehensive
Social Media and Internet Marketing Strategy.

Initial consultations are free with no obligation

If you’re serious about your small business I sincerely
hope you will read that page and be in touch – for your sake.

This is one of the most important revelations I’ve had since I started blogging and it applies to everything we do:

Quantity is NOT necessary!

Focusing on quantity is the reason that the Internet is littered with useless blogs and Web sites created by people desperate to make money online.

Having multiple blogs seems like a good idea when you first start blogging because a blog needs to give the audience what they want and ONLY what they want as much as possible.

It doesn’t work though because there are only so many hours in the day and each blog needs someone who is passionate about creating exceptional content and interacting with readers.

FOCUS ON ONE QUALITY BLOG!
Guest post on related high quality blogs.
Collaborate with social-media savvy bloggers.

In all things you do FOCUS on RELATED collaborations!

That reality leads to trying to find ways to automate content which dilutes quality and sends your blog or business toward failure. Many viable sites drift along because the person who built them can’t focus enough attention on them.

People THINK quantity is required because they believe
that is what it takes to rank in the search engines –
especially Google.

Fortunately that is NOT true because
QUALITY and RELEVANCY work even better!

I can prove this. Do a search for the phrase gift affiliate program and check the positions of posts on MurrayNewlands.com, GrowMap.com and ExecGiftsBlog.com or see the screen capture below:

Google Results for search Gift Affiliate Program Dec 15, 2011

Prior to doing this search I logged out of Google and I used Google Unpersonalized so the results should not be affected by personalization.

You can see from the screen capture above the positions of these
three posts that are today ALL on the first page at Google:

• Third: MurrayNewlands.com
• Fourth: GrowMap.com
• Tenth: ExecGiftsBlog.com

Note the dates of these three posts: Oct 23, Nov 1 and Nov 2, 2009 - over TWO YEARS ago. I have NOT done any link building to any of those posts and have rarely even shared or looked at them since 2009.

They immediately went to the first page and there they still rank.

Sometimes one of them will slip to the top of the second page and sometimes all three on the first page. This is in spite of there being several very strong affiliate marketing forums ranking, that being a very good phrase, and there being who knows how many hundreds of gift affiliate programs.

WHY ARE THEY ON PAGE ONE?
Simple. They are highly relevant quality content
related to that phrase and they link to each other.

Will my publishing this cause them to fall off page one? I don’t know, but we’ll find out, won’t we?

SEO MYTHS:

What does this tell you about commonly held myths about SEO such as:

• Reciprocal linking is ineffective – obviously not.
• Huge numbers of incoming links are necessary – doesn’t look like it to me.

That is NOT the only example of my using that strategy, but it is the only one I’m going to share. I invite you to try it for yourself or if you don’t have access to relevant blogs or blogging skills you can hire me to implement this strategy as part of blog outreach for your blog or small business.

Instead of focusing on more than one blog, massive link building, article marketing – and especially instead of using horrible automated linkbuilding tools that steal the time of others do this:

Focus on ONE high quality BLOG
Guest post on RELATED quality blogs
Collaborate with social-media savvy bloggers.

In all things you do FOCUS on RELATED collaborations!

If you don’t already have one blog consider NOT starting your own blog at all – at least for now. Almost every top blog has evolved into a group blog even if they aren’t “officially” a group blog because they publish many guest posts.

Whether you have a blog of your own or not, what we really need are collaborations of related blogs and group geo-targeted blogs because reaching a specific niche geo-targeted audience is the logical next step for bloggers AND businesses.

Every blog (or collaboration) should have both a niche
AND geographically specific content
AND a geo-targeted Twitter account

Think of the blogs you read most or sites from which you have bought products or services:

• Q: Do they have auto-generated content?
  • A: Of course not.
• Q: Do they spam other blogs? 
  • A: Certainly not!
• Q: Do you buy anything from blogs covered in AdSense ads with mediocre content?
  • A: No? Then why would anyone else?
    
• Q: Would you buy from a site that is spamming you with blog comments, spam email, or on any social network?
  • A: Not if you have good sense.
    

I assure anyone reading this that quality always trumps quantity and I hope by what I have shared here you now realize that huge quantities are NOT necessary.

I am NOT saying that link building is not important.
What I am saying is that links from a quality RELATED site
are more valuable than a zillion links from auto-generated junk.

Success will come from focusing all your efforts on reaching the audience most interested in what you have to offer. That is true on social media (and easily done on Twitter), in your blogs, through guest posting on related blogs, and in building collaborations.

RECOMMENDED READING: Hubspot has an excellent blog and offers exceptional advice on lead generation and management. Start with their post Content Quantity Diminishes Quality [Research] Here’s an exerpt:

The quality vs. quantity content debate isn’t an uncommon one in marketing, especially in the world of inbound marketing. High quality content is beneficial from a thought leadership and brand perception perspective, but marketers also struggle with the need to produce content regularly and frequently to compete for higher search engine rankings and fuel their inbound marketing strategies.

With recent developments in ranking algorithms such as Google Panda, however, quality has gained a competitive edge, as search engines are starting to value content high in quality and ding websites with low quality content.

That intelligence, coupled with the insights from the Presenter’s Paradox, make for a compelling case for quality over quantity in content creation, doesn’t it? The lesson is simple:

Don’t dilute your high-quality content
with mediocre or low-quality content.

Don’t take my word for it. Test it for yourself. Or hire me to show you by doing it for you. [NOTE: I only work with 2-3 total clients per month because I give them vastly more time than I charge them for and so I can mentor them in how to blog, do social media, grow their influence, etc. - so if you want my personal assistance contact me asap because once those spots are full I won't be able to accept more clients.]

Read quality blogs about SEO, especially Aaron Wall’s SEOBook. Start with this interview with Aaron and Andy Hagans on Link Building. Don’t miss probably the most important post I’ve seen on Google’s plans and my comments in that post.

Lastly, check out the brand new SEO Infographic below by SEO Book:

SEOBook Organic Link Infographic

The information in the above infographic combined with my posts detailing why Google IS Evil and How Google Limits Our Freedom of Choice By Discriminating Against Small Business clearly show that Google has declared war on small businesses.

As always, my readers are encouraged to comment and leave relevant links. Businesses and bloggers alike should take advantage of putting their best keywords in as anchor text in their comments. See the information about How to Use KeywordLuv for more details on how that works and how it benefits you.

CONTENT MARKETING EVENTS:

• Content Marketing World: The largest and leading content marketing event on the planet. The 2012 event takes place at the Columbus Convention Center in Columbus Ohio, September 4-6.

CONTENT MARKETING WEBINARS:

• Content Marketing Institute Monthly Content Marketing Webinars

CONTENT MARKETING BLOGS:

• Content Marketing Institute Content Marketing Blog
• See the Junta42 Top Content Marketing Blogs List for the best content marketing related blogs

Did you know? For many businesses, holiday sales are the key to finally getting into the black for the year (black ink on their accounting page = being profitable for the year – which is why it is called Black Friday).

Read this post for details: How to Get More Traffic Being Featured on JustRetweet

For bloggers who offer anything for sale, this time of year can also bring them increased income through affiliate products, additional advertising, or offering their own products like Kristi’s Blog Promotion Guide.

This year we have a new fast, easy way to increase your traffic so you cam potentially increase your income: a joint venture project I am partnering in for promoting blogs and small businesses called Just Retweet with a primary purpose of driving more traffic from Twitter. <<< Click that link for more on how to use JustRetweet.

Holiday VIP Special Discounts ~ Be featured on JustRetweet:

• Only $15 to be featured for one week – regular price $25
• Featured for two weeks – regular price $35 now only $25
• BEST DEAL: Featured for a full month for only $35 - you save $30

To buy just click this link to go to the Buy Credits Tab on JustRetweet

Being featured will get you more Twitter followers and the more you use the site the more Twitter users who will share your content, products, special deals – whatever you most desire – with all their followers.

Many of the influential bloggers invited to use JustRetweet have 10s of 1000s of followers and now YOU have an easy way to reach their followers IF they believe what you share will interest them!

Ileane from @BasicBlogTips where you can get blogging tips and find out how to optimize your social media has created this wonderful How to Use JustRetweet video:

[Notice that the embed code does NOT display the video cover Ileane used in the video; apparently YouTube wants their ads to display instead. They could at least include the actual video cover, too.  This image style will reduce clicks on images shared elsewhere.]

TWITTER RESOURCES:

• Kikolani: How to Increase Your Retweets, Twitter Followers and Klout
• GrowMap: Twitter Best Practices – all my Twitter tips in one place
• TweetSmarter: Excellent site for how to use Twitter effectively

Special Thanks to Kelli Miller @3boysandadog who created the image in this post and the 125×125 ad block that links this offer on the JustRetweet Homepage to this blog post explaining it.

HOMESCHOOLERS: Anyone who homeschools - or is considering it – should check out Kelli’s homeschooling freebies and every serious blogger  should consider one of Kelli’s Blog Media Kits available from her BlogPrintMedia Digital Design site.

NEW: While the price HAS gone up,
buying CommentLuv Premium is still very affordable.
Click the banner below to see single site, multi-site and developer prices.

Click this banner to find out more and see the latest prices. This IS my affiliate link.

The much awaited day when anyone can buy their own copy of the 8-in-1 WordPress plugin CommentLuv Premium has finally arrived. If you don’t know why there has been so much buzz about it – or why you want to snap it up while it is on sale for the lowest price it will ever be available for again – check out these previous posts:

• 28 reviews of CommentLuv Premium by influential bloggers you probably already know who were handpicked by Andy to test before the official launch – why they use it and you should, too.
• Bullet points on the benefits of CommentLuv Premium
• CommentLuv Your Way to Business Prosperity – my unique take on how bloggers using CommentLuv can improve our economy, standard of living, and increase their traffic and income by being small business friendly.

Remember that all CommentLuv Premium plugin users are
automatically affiliates. The link you used when you signed up
to be notified is who will be paid an affiliate commission so
when you sign up use the link from YOUR favorite blogger.

COMMENTLUV SEARCH ENGINE

The new and improved Comment Luv search engine is already online to make finding other CommentLuv bloggers in your niche easier than ever.

Reading and commenting in blogs related to your own is not
only the best way to grow your own blog – it is also the most fun.Visit the Global CommentLuv Enabled Site Search Engine

I am having CommentLuv Premium installed in all the blogs I manage and recommend it to every client and blogger because it really IS that good. If you want it why not get it now while the price is so reasonable?

There are also a bunch of bonuses for buying now. I’ll let Andy tell you about them in the best CommentLuv Premium video he has ever done.

If you have any questions I’m happy to answer them in the comments of any of my posts or you can send me a regular tweet @GrowMap (if you DM let me know or I won’t see it).

Be sure to leave your links to be included
in my updated DoFollow CommentLuv Blog lists.

I’ll give bloggers some time to get CommentLuv Premium configured and then prioritize my lists into groups in this order:

1. CommentLuv blogs with dofollow keywords and CommentLuv links
2. CommentLuv blogs with dofollow keywords / nofollow CommentLuv
3. CommentLuv blogs w/ dofollow CommentLuv / nofollowed keywords
4. CommentLuv blogs w/ dofollow CommentLuv / no keywords
5. Nofollow CommentLuv blogs w/ nofollow keywords
6. Nofollow CommentLuv blogs w/o keywords
7. Non- CommentLuv blogs

As you can see that will take some major checking and continual updating as bloggers change their minds. This is how I decide where to spend my time – the more generous the blogger the more I promote what they’re doing on Twitter, StumbleUpon, Google+, Facebook, FriendFeed and now on JustRetweet, too.

The higher on the list a blogger is (and that is totally up to them)
the more likely they will be invited to specific projects that come
with benefits like our JustRetweet collaboration and our
Conversion Doubler landing page optimization program.

These are also the bloggers whose new posts I tweet,
that I recommend to other bloggers,
and who I link to in my posts here and elsewhere.

Don’t forget to let me know if you qualify!

Click Image to read why we need Geographically Targeted Group Blogs

Small businesses and bloggers are missing enormous opportunities that can be easily accessed by creating geographically targeted Twitter accounts and blog content.

By adding a local component to your social media accounts and blog, or creating accounts specifically to reach a location based audience, your Twitter account becomes far more valuable – for you and others.

Any business that operates in a limited geographic area will want to implement these tips as will all bloggers – whether you think this applies to what you are doing or not. Read on to find out WHY your geolocation is your strongest niche.

Small businesses probably already realize that a Twitter account with followers scattered around the world is unlikely to increase their local leads or sales. They will understand why the people they most want to reach are their neighbors who could be interested in their products or services.

Small Businesses Need to Reach Local Audiences –
Bloggers Who Have Local Influence Are Invaluable
Because when you can reach a local market
It makes sense for businesses to buy advertising
on your blog or pay you for blog outreach services.

Bloggers frequently tell me they do not want to “limit” their audience to a specific location and I spend a lot of time explaining to them why adding geo-targeted information to their blog positions them where the money is and will get them more recommendations.

Blogs and Twitter accounts providing LOCAL information that
shares content specifically beneficial to people in your location
makes others want to share it with others
BECAUSE IT IS UNIQUE and provides value.

Adding a local component to your existing blogs or Twitter accounts OR creating a Twitter account or blog specifically for a particular geographic location is not difficult.

WHY GEO-TARGET YOUR TWEETS?

Are you a tiny fish lost in a HUGE ocean?

When you are a tiny fish
in an enormous ocean
of 1000s or 1os of 1000s
of Blogs in your niche –

WHY should anyone recommend you?

Be one of the Biggest fish in your LOCAL pond

Decide to become a HUGE fish in your Local Small Pond and provide content on your blog and on Twitter that is interesting and useful to that local audience you give them an excellent reason to share what you are doing with others.

Go out of your way to create content of local interest and connect with people interested in what is happening locally.

You become a more effective influencer
With a much more targeted audience.

HOW TO TWITTER LOCALLY:

1. Claim a Twitter username that includes your location. Consider common abbreviations and local nicknames. You must use a different email address for each Twitter account. You can get a free email address from mail.yahoo.com and many other sites.
2. Add an Avatar image related to your location and write a bio specifically about that city, metro, state or country.
3. Create a blog page about your new location and link to it from your Twitter account and make sure your Twitter username is easy to locate on that page and on your blog or site.
4. Follow Twitter users in your desired location (see tools below for how to find them).
5. Find interesting content about what’s happening, live events, local entertainment, or even the local news and weather and use Twitterfeed or something similar to feed useful information to your local followers.
6. Manually share additional tweets of interest locally.
7. Interact with others in your target location.

Join experienced bloggers with social media influence
on JustRetweet.com ~ Read about how we support other
bloggers and small business with Twitter retweets.

DoFollow CommentLuv Bloggers Add Your Blogs Here
to be considered by our special projects and private forum.

Small Businesses AND bloggers should also read
CommentLuv Your Way to Business Prosperity

HOW TO ADD A LOCAL COMPONENT TO YOUR EXISTING BLOG:

1. When writing about your usual niche add specific information useful to your local readers at the end. For example, if you’re a deals blogger add a few local deals at the end of your regular posts.
2. Write some posts specifically for your local readers. To continue with our deals example, if your blog has lots of deals content it won’t hurt to write a few posts about deals that are only available locally. Put those in a separate category.
3. Create categories for your geographic niche. When you include local info at the end of posts about your usual topics put those in the usual category AND the geo-targeted category. If a post is ONLY of interest locally, put it in the geo-targeted category only.
4. Use local businesses as examples in posts about your usual topics.
5. Write featured reviews, interviews, and human interest posts about topics of interest to your local audience. Your national or international readers are likely to consider these interesting for the same reason travel blogs are so popular. Those that don’t can skip over them because you’re putting them in a separate category.
6. Offer a separate RSS feed for you geo-targeted category so non-local readers can opt out if they wish. I will research and add a post on how to do this as soon as time allows.
7. Use these tips from professional copywriter Donna Anderson (@SheWritesALot) on writing compelling local content and read about or join our local blogging collaborations.

Join us at Just Retweet ~ Bloggers supporting bloggers and small business

TWITTER LOCAL

Although there is an account for the Twitter Geo Team @Geo and there were posts about Twitter Places there does not appear to be anything happening as far as an official Twitter Local offering except for prompts from the Tweet Location Feature

Ways tools can determine location:

1. Information in the Twitter profile.
2. Locations mentioned in tweets.
3. Profiles completed on third party sites.
4. By pulling data from additional sources.

All our Twitter related tips and strategies can be reached through
Our Twitter Best Practices post on How To Use Twitter Effectively.

TWITTER SEARCH TOOLS

Listed in order of usefulness at the time I tested them:

• Advanced Twitter Search ~ Type the location you are interested in into the Places /near this place field and select the number of miles around you want to search. Many of the results returned will be from Twitter users in that location. For large metro areas like Dallas Ft. Worth I use 50 miles. For small locations you may want to reduce that and if you are targeting an entire state you would select a city near the center of the state and select the number of miles it is from that city to the state boundary lines.
• FollowerWonk ~ Includes an option to search your followers by location. Use this when you create Twitter account(s) for specific locations so you can follow those you already have relationships with in an existing Twitter account.

ONLINE TWITTER GEO TOOLS:

1. WeFollow by City ~ Search for Twitter user by city; choose results ranked by most followers or most influential.
2. TwellowHood ~ Simple tool to use – just type in a location to find Twitter users who mention that location in their Twitter profiles. Results are ranked by number of Twitter followers by default. While you may find disabled accounts Twellow is a good way to locate blogs, businesses and individuals by niche, interests, or location.
3. TweetGrader ~ Twitter Elite by Top City – lists of the top 50 Twitter users for a given city, but although their blurb says the lists are ranked by number of followers that is clearly not true now. Exact criterion for ranking unknown. If you know how they are ranking, leave details and/or relevant links in the comments of this post and I will update this section.
4. Twitaholic – while not intended for the purpose, you can find someone in the location you are interested in on Twitaholic, click on the location link, and you will get the top Twitter users for that location ranked by the number of followers they have.
5. Twibs ~ Search Twibs for Twitter users by Geographic Location
6. ChirpCity ~Find out what Twitter users in a city are tweeting OR what tweeters around the world are saying about a location. Searches by keyword so all results will not be what you’re seeking.
7. Local Tweeps~ Looked like a good idea: Register a location for your Twitter account, then log into the site to follow other Twitter users in that location directly on the Local Tweeps site.  Unfortunately I was not able to get logged in and none of the four people listed on their about page has tweeted since at least Nov 15 or between Nov 15-Nov 22, 2011.
8. NearbyTweets ~ I was unable to get this tool to pick up my location because I recently tweeted about New York and clicking preferences in FireFox and Chrome did nothing. If there is a way to manually enter your location I haven’t found it yet. If you are able to get this to work for you, please leave a comment with details.

TWITTER LOCAL TOOLS:

• TwitterLocal.net – Adobe Air based tool that has to be downloaded to be used.

How to Find Local Twitter Users:

• Mashable: Local Tweets: 9 Ways to Find Twitter Users in Your Town (Jun 8, 2009)

MEET LOCAL TWITTER USERS:

• Tweetup Meetup Groups – Use this Tweetup link to search for Twitter Meetups around the world.
• Twtvite ~ Site to create Tweetup groups by location or plan local tweetups

LOCAL iPhone Twitter Apps:

• According to Mashable Local Tweets Post from Jun 8, 2009: “Four iPhone Twitter apps that include location-based search are Twinkle (free), TwitterFon (free), Tweetie ($2.99), and Twittelator Pro ($4.99). “

INACTIVE TWITTER APPS:

After I had come across so many Twitter apps that used to have local features that are no longer available I added this section so that I and others will not be looking for them.

• Tweetmondo

Do you have tips or additional resources
for geotargeting Twitter accounts?

We’d love to hear from you. Just leave a comment
or use our contact tab. Relevant links always welcome.