This is a guest post by Sam Taylor, a senior writer and product manager from a trusted hosting reviews company.

Image Credit: AllAccess.com - Click image to read Harker Research on When Should You Rebrand.

Oftentimes a company will appear on the market and after years of its existence, a name change occurs. Not only is there a change in the name, but the company’s overall design, image, products or services takes on a complete new look. This is known as “re-branding”.

Re-branding is associated with a business that is trying to disassociate itself from a negative image as a result of an occurrence that has happened to the company or its product.

How important is re-branding?

The new image and the great impact that has been placed on the company’s product representation sends out a complete new message about who they are and what they represent. It is very important that the company’s identity be handled with some degree of sensitivity and care so as not to run old customers away and at the same time attract new clients.

Although there is a new look, strategies must be devised so that the customer’s attention instead of being drawn away by the changes, is refocused on the product and how it can best serve their needs. After all, it has to be a marketing approach that presents a product with great qualities, competitive pricing, value, and distribution that is efficient. This will ensure that the brand remains at the top of its category.

Why and when should a business consider re-branding?

Changes are taking place on a daily basis that include competition, consumer’s need, distribution, and above all technology. Therefore, it only makes sense to continually look for ways to modify and better the brand of product or service with new perspectives and ideas. Other reasons why a business should consider re-branding are:

1. Lack of customer interest

Reasons why a customer’s interest may be slacking include general image, customer service style, communication strategy, product design or an emotional message the brand is communicating. At this point, the company should analyze competitors with higher rankings, making sure the brand is unique enough that it differentiates its service or product from theirs.

2. Decline in sales

Your sales will be a good indicator. Bring in some “fresh eyes” to help determine if it is time to clean the slate and start anew. Too often internal company traditions, such as staying true to the original founder’s perspectives, can be an obstacle in moving the company forward. A new view can give a different outlook on what is working and what is not. There are companies that are known for sending their products out into the market and having taste test demonstrations set up to find out which product the customer preferred, the old or the new.

3. Ineffective brand name

Thought and research should be given to a brand name before placing it on the market. You have to look ahead at what changes might take place, customer’s opinions as well as attitudes, and the state of the environment years down the road. Analyze the international market; some brand names are not suitable or may be offensive to another language or group of people. Be thorough in your research by checking every avenue that might possibly affect and decrease sales because of the name that has been chosen to represent your product or service.

Elements that should be changed

1. Opinions

Increase the appeal of your service or product that will change the opinions of the mainstream. The new perception based around the brand’s name should persuade consumers to forget the old and turn their attention to the new.

2. Brand’s Name

This is not about what is said about a company, but rather its reputation and how it is represented. It defines who the company is, the values that they hold, and what products or services it offers.

3. Brand’s Logo

Changing a logo involves more than just replacing one font by another. One should keep in the mind when making the change why the changes are needed, the customer’s view, and the longevity of the logo. In addition, keep the changes to new design at a minimum and as close to the original as possible.

4. Image

When the image of a company has been tarnished, then it is necessary to revamp the good name and appearance by distancing itself from the negative images of the past. Negativity does not only damage the image, but also the good reputation and profitability of the company.

5. Marketing Strategy

Many companies do not understand the importance of developing a backup strategy to support their brand. Without a clear plan it is impossible to define a company. The best results can be accomplished by investing time and money in cultivating a clearly developed and effective marketing strategy.

6. Advertising

Advertising and promotion of the new brand is what gains the attention of the public. The planning and designing of an effective advertising campaign promises positive results. It must be a campaign that is affirmative, mind changing, and straightforward, calling the attention of people to the product or service that is offered.

Advertising through different forms of media can be effective if it is handled correctly. A lot of money is always behind the scenes of advertisements and it can make or break your campaign. Radio plugs and commercial ads brings high chances of getting your new brand to be noticed again and of course, ads will always be useless if everything on it isn’t true.

Avoid false advertising. You do not want to generate misleading expectations or disappoint your customers while you are redeeming your product or service and trying to get back into the spotlight.

Integrating a business web hosting service to update or design a website centered on the new brand is a also a good strategy to have your new branded product/service achieve an online presence. It will always be hard to establish your brand but you’ve got to start somewhere and having an innovative website for your product can be a good start.

Whether it is a long standing or a new brand that has graced the red carpet of the marketplace, when it comes to making a change for whatever reason, sensitivity must be given to the action that is being taken. The vision of the change must be broad enough, that it leaves nothing and no one out; receptive enough, that it considers all whom it may affect; and simple enough, that no one is left with any questions.

About the Author: This article was written by Sam Taylor, a senior writer and product manager from a trusted hosting reviews company HostingObserver.com, provider of best quality webhosting reviews and web development resource.

REBRANDING VIDEO:

Do you need to rebrand or do you just need more visibility? Check out this video:

Q: What do you get when you cross a social network with an ecommerce site?

A: Goskoop: a custom cyber deals site with a personal online ecommerce concierge that continually searches the Web for whatever you ask it to find – products, services, books, music movies, vehicles, real estate – even a job.

Instead of you searching for what you need – what you need finds you! Enter a search once and Goskoop will keep seeking deals until you click ‘turn off’.

As Goskoop CEO Darshan Gadkari explains:

“Goskoop constantly searches for buyers rather than have the seller wait to have someone find them. It facilitates an active search for consumers seeking unique deals rather than have them revisiting their search.”

Over 1000 beta testers have used Goskoop to date and there are already over ten million products listed on the site with more being added every day. 70% of inventory is national.

Early listings are strongest in these METROS: Dallas, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Nashville and Washington D.C.

The best coverage of products so far is in electronics, movies, health and beauty, watches and jewelry, toys, baby products, and supplements.

Goskoop is small business friendly!

They encourage you to add your products and links
and promote yourself on their site.

Realtors: add rental and sales listings and create a local network.

Authors: promote your books.

The Goskoop site is simple to use:

1. Select what you need (books, ebooks, business/service, job, music, movie, product, real estate, vehicle.
2. Choose between buy or sell / own.
3. Type what you want in the search box.
4. Click Skoop it.

This screen capture shows a pending search ready to click "skoop it".

After you click Skoop it, the GoSkoop site will add your search to your vault, return existing results, and notify you whenever a new listing that matches your search is added:

This screen capture shows my search added to my vault. The numbers indicate how many sellers/deals are available and how many 'Others Buying Same'

When you’ve found your deal and don’t need the search any more simply delete the search. Or if you are busy and want to save it until later, you can easily turn off matches with a click of a button in your vault.

If there are other Goskoop users interested in buying the same product, you can click on View Scoop on the Others Buying Same popup and add them as connections:

When others are searching for the same thing as you are you can see them in Others Buying Same - and add them as connections to exchange resources or ask questions.

Goskoop is just out of beta and additional features are scheduled to go live October 1st including the ability to sort results by price, date and relevance.

Businesses and individuals are invited to list their products and
services and for now that is completely free of any cost to them.

You can also list and find jobs and real estate.

Goskoop has just released a Goskoop Android Mobile App and has a Goskoop iPhone app in development to make it fast and easy to manage your deals from your smart phone.  You can even take photos while out shopping to remind you what you are interested in that will be included in your vault result.

My readers know how much I emphasize the need for independent alternatives to multi-national corporations. Big brands are controlled by the same big money as the major media and they use it to promote companies they control like Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay.

If you hear about a brand in the media or they are featured in movies, television shows or at sporting events they have the support of the major media. The challenge for small, independent solutions is they will never have that backing – all they has is US to create a grass roots movement to support them.

This is a MAJOR uphill battle and Goskoop and other startups and businesses need us to consistently spread the word and use their sites. Goskoop could grow into an alternative to Google, Facebook, and all the others IF we are willing to use them and be patient as they roll out new features. I’m game – are you?

Related Posts about Goskoop Cyber Deals:

• Yahoo Finance:Emerging e-Commerce Concierge, Goskoop, Announces Addition of Mobile App
• Market Watch: Start-up Goskoop’s Application Eases Online Buying/Selling

Image Credit: Agent 3155: Mainstrea Media: Truth or Lies

Every time I read a post bemoaning the idea that copywriters and bloggers deserve to be compensated for their time because journalism should be impartial, I wonder whether people truly believe that the major media does not primarily benefit the wealthy who control it.

Back in the old days (say in the ’70s when I studied Journalism), a journalist was taught to only report the news and any opinion was to be found only on the editorial page.

The truth remains that those businesses that could afford to buy advertising influenced what got published. To deny that is naive.

What the audience of any publication really needs to know
will never appear in the major magazines, newspapers or broadcasts
whenever that information would be contrary to the
interests of the advertisers supporting that media.

I’ll offer an example from an industry I know well. You are never going to read in The Blood-Horse or The Thoroughbred Times that the Thoroughbred Breeding Industry is about creating the next big stallion – not racing.

You are not going to read that the Throughbred Industry’s goal is not creating great racehorses as much as it is to separate those with the deepest pockets from their money consistently. (Which, given the overhead they have, is a logical – although not very ethical given how it is done – goal to have.)

They have spent decades conditioning buyers to believe that only the offspring of Kentucky Derby winning stallions out of mares who have already produced stakes winners can become stakes winners and deserve the highest bids because only they will win the Kentucky Derby.

If you believe that is true you haven’t paid attention to history. Use the Internet to find articles like this 1971 article from Sports Illustrated: Is it Crooked or Straight? The legs of yearlings go every which way at Keeneland’s poor man’s sale, but smart buyers have found the last two Derby winners there.”

Statistics prove otherwise and if someone wanted to be leading owner they can do that for a lot less money IF they hire the best pedigree analysts and one particular conformation expert I know AND know what specific conditions where the prospect was raised they must avoid.

Image Credit: Horseman Magazine Choosing a Thoroughbred

To their credit, The California Thoroughbred Breeders Association publishes a Thoroughbred Yearling Buyers Guide that debunks some common myths, but if you really want to be successful hire an insider and buy directly from the farm BEFORE the yearlings go through conditioning.

You will never read that the most expensive racing prospects are being crippled by elective equine corrective surgery to make them APPEAR to be correct when they might be sound (although less perfect in appearance) if left alone. Sadly, the surgery misaligns the supporting structures and almost guarantees they will break down.

This happens because agents want to avoid any visible conditions when recommending purchases so they will not be blamed if the prospect does not stay sound. If they were NOT operated on and had a visible imperfection, but were sound the agent WOULD BE BLAMED should some unrelated accident disable them.

You don’t even want to know what is done to win races or how many means are justified in the pursuit of the ends. That is true for racing and it is true for most other industries, BUT WE CAN CHANGE THAT!

We can collectively favor the best Fair Trade concepts and be willing to pay reasonable prices for what we buy. We can support ethical small businesses with our time and money and stop spending money that benefits none by the wealthy few.

Let me study any industry and I will find for you the unwritten truth that you will never read because to publish what hurts your advertisers is suicidal for any media outlet.

Today news isn’t even news and the main reason I believe there are influential people championing the idea that word of mouth should always be free is to benefit the bottom line of companies that would always rather improve their bottom line than pay the ‘little people’ like us.

“Mass Media is the most powerful tool
used by the ruling class to manipulate the masses.

It shapes and molds opinions and attitudes
and defines what is normal and acceptable. “
~ Vigilant Citizen ~
Mind Control Theories and Techniques used by Mass Media

Let me make this perfectly clear to those who don’t understand us:

The opinions of bloggers who are
highly ethical thinkers are
NOT for sale at ANY price!

Our time and influence are valuable so
We expect to be compensated!

We can write about businesses, products or services and give our honest opinions whether we do this because we were moved to do so or whether we receive products or access to services or we are paid to write our views.

Money does not corrupt us – especially such tiny
amounts of money because we do not worship money.

Transparency makes a lot more sense because many question whether journalism can be impartial because everything anyone writes IS someone’s opinion and is colored by their background. While some may APPEAR to be impartial that only indicates that their opinions may be more mainstream than some others.

Dan Thornton suggested that Great Journalism Can Be Impartial But Not Neutral. What we believe to be impartiality is more likely to be our being in sync with whatever the publicly acceptable opinions of the day are. If we’re honest, we have to admit we would not be impartial if we were moved to somewhere that accepted norms were vastly different.

Some Word of Mouth advocates seem to be believe that bloggers writing about your business should be free and instead of paying celebrities for endorsement maybe you’ll get lucky and catch them using your product so you can buy advertising that takes advantage of an implied endorsement instead of paying them.

That reminds me that many celebrities are suing brands over their use of look-alike actors and actresses who are basically impersonating them in commercials. At least some of the time the celebrities or their estates win lawsuits over celebrity impersonations used in advertising. Just last month it was widely reported that Kim Kardashian is suing Old Navy for Violating Her Right of Publicity.

Does anyone else find it ironic that brands question
bloggers’ integrity when their own is so slippery?

And don’t even get me started about how far over the line of what is appropriate for public display in what we once referred to as “polite” or “mixed” company the mainstream media is now. Advertising has gone beyond suggestive to blatantly sexual adult entertainment masquerading as advertising. Where will the line be drawn if we don’t start speaking out?

I ask my fellow bloggers to not take the easy way of promoting big brands and instead reach out to their local small businesses. By adding local content to your blog and creating collaborations of bloggers we can make a good living creating stronger local communities.

I wrote about Why Supporting Your Favorite Local Small Businesses Through Word of Mouth Recommendations improves our standard of living. That post includes statistics clearly showing what the results of a new study by Economists Stephan Goetz and David Fleming published in Economic Development Quarterly finds that Local Businesses are Key to Income Growth:

The key to reversing the long-term trend of stagnating incomes
in the U.S. lies in nurturing small, locally owned businesses
and limiting further expansion and market consolidation
by large corporations.

The debate over whether bloggers can be both compensated and trusted has been raging since PayPerPost offerings in 2006 and heated up at Evo’11 Evo Conference (Evolution of Women in Social Media) when Estee Lauder’s Aveda came out against what LoraLee of @looneytoons called “monetarily compensating bloggers”.

Hers is one of the best posts that came out of Evo:

I THINK SEASONED BLOGGERS ARE FIGHTING
FOR MONETARY COMPENSATION FOR SPONSORED WORK.

SPONSORED WORK.

NOT EDITORIAL WORK.

And this is where I think a lot of misunderstanding happens.

I love the way Yvonne DiVita of Windsor Media Enterprises, LLC said she replies to PR pitches in The Cost Of Free Publicity: How Much Is Too Little? on the American Express OpenForum:

“Did your local newspaper offer to promote this for free?
If they don’t do free advertising, why should I?”

Scroll way down for links to excellent discussions on whether bloggers should ever be paid, and if they are under what circumstances. Be part of these discussions that will shape where blogging, PR and business are going.

Before you do, though, give some serious thought to the purpose of media and why you blog. I want to share with you some information about media you may have never considered and encourage you to realize this:

WE BLOGGERS, COLLECTIVELY,
Can be the voice denied us for so long.

We can be a counterbalance to the conditioning
Of humanity worldwide by the major media.

Take our role seriously as a way to create a better world
For whatever time we have left.

I do.

Edward Benais wrote in his 1927 book Propaganda available online at History is a Weapon:

“Society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.” ~ Edward Benais ~

That has never been so clear as it is now with Google Instant and all manner of other items on Google’s agenda wanting to dictate what we can find and the masses willing going along with it.

We are not like those who allow others to make their decisions for them. We do not consent to have the Google Monopoly decide what we will see and will not see.

Through collaborations of wise bloggers
we can retain our freedom of choice and
make sure our blogs and small businesses can be found.

It is time that many more people wake up and realize there has always been an agenda and we are getting very near the end of it. Before any are tempted to dismiss what I say as some “conspiracy theory” you really need to see all the famous people who have publicly announced that there IS a NEW WORLD ORDER.

This video is one of the simpler ways to grasp the big picture all at once (full length movie 2 hours 14 minutes):

BLOG OUTREACH:

• GrowMap: What is Blog Outreach – Includes Types of Blog Outreach and how they are usually compensated
• MarketingPilgrim: According to new eMarketer Research: Nearly Half of All Marketers are Willing to Pay for Posts (Aug 26, 2011)
• WOMMA: Code of Word of Mouth Marketing Ethics and Standards
• Jeremiah Owyang: A Running List of Sponsored Conversations across different mediums including product placement in movies (Mar 2, 2009 but may be being updated)
• FTC to Bloggers (and Celebrities): Fess Up or Pay Up

PRO PAYING BLOGGERS:

• Brand Meets Blog: Paying Bloggers (Aug 22, 2011)
• Stephanie Schwab on Social Media Explorer: Bloggers Are Promotional Partners, Which Is Bad For PR (Aug 4, 2011)
• LoraLeesLooneyTune: When and How Should Bloggers Be Compensated? (Jul 13, 2011)
• JustinCaseYourWereWondering: PR Should Never Pay Bloggers, Right? Never Say Never (Jul 19, 2011)
• Sommer Poquette: Brands, Bloggers and Money (Jul 11, 2011)
• blogging Angels: Tips for Brands on How to Approach Bloggers (Jun 27, 2011)
• Kelli on MurrayNewlands.com: Should Businesses Pay Mommy Bloggers (Sep 13, 2010)
• Stephanie Schwab on Cracker Jack Marketing: Brands Working with Bloggers: It’s Confusing (May 18, 2010)
• Jeremiah Owyang: How To Make Sponsored Conversations Work (Mar 2, 2009)
• Forrester Research: Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox
• Social Media Consultant Kelby Carr: Mom Bloggers Deserve to Get Paid (Nov 15, 2009)
• Empowered (Forrester Blog post by Josh Bernoff): Why sponsored conversation — aka paid blog posts — can make sense (Mar 2, 2009)
• Chris Brogan: Advertising and Trust (Dec 13, 2008)

AGAINST PAYING BLOGGERS:

• HighTalk: Brands Should Not Pay Bloggers (Jul 21, 2011)
• ReadWriteWeb: Forrester is Wrong About Paying Bloggers (Mar 2, 2009)

UNDECIDED or IT DEPENDS:

• PR Consultant Scott Hepburn: When Should Brands Pay Bloggers (Excellent food for thought and discussion of specific scenarios.) (Aug 5, 2011)
• Are You Paying for Word of Mouth Marketing? (Jul 15, 2010)
• Big Banks Pay Bloggers Big Bucks for Sales Referrals

As always, your opinions and questions are welcome here – whether you agree or disagree. How and when bloggers should be paid for what is still evolving and the more input from different niches the faster we can all develop best practices in that regard.

Also as always here we encourage you to leave links in the comments to any related posts or discussions you feel others may want to see. We believe that only by having an open mind and considering all input can we find the Truth.

I had an interesting conversation on Twitter yesterday that prompted me to write this post because there is an important Twitter and life lesson to be learned from it.

Tadeusz Szewczyk aka Tad Chef aka @onreact_com who has an SEO blog and writes for the Search Marketing Firm SEOoptimize sent me these Tweets that included a link to his post on Twitter Netiquette:

While I DO agree with most of his points in that post, there is one very good reason why my Twitter feed is not Burger King so everyone can’t have it “their way”:

You can’t please 16,578 people and counting so you should not even try!

One of the major problems in our relationships and world peace is that almost all people expect everyone else to do everything “their way” – not realizing how many very different ways others see the world.

As more and more people realize that everyone can NOT have things their way, life will be more pleasant. We all need to be far more tolerant and easy-going – especially about small stuff – and as the saying goes, “It’s all small stuff”.

We need to realize we can NOT have what we personally would prefer because:

1. For every person that thinks something is too much there are just as many who think something is not enough – like Tweets or links
2. Believe it or not no one can read your mind

Most people are NOT intentionally doing things to annoy you. The majority are totally self-focused and everything they do is what they feel is best FOR THEM.

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you
if you realized how seldom they do.”  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

Those who are doing what is best for the many like me still can not do things “your way” because:

1. We need to focus on what is best for all of our followers and not just you.
2. We can’t read your mind so we could not do what you feel is best for you even if that was our greatest desire.
3. Even if you send us a great post on Twitterquette we can’t be sure exactly which of your points was what caused you to send it to us.
4. There are NO hard and fast rules for ANYTHING – and that includes Twitter.
5. While having rules might make those who want to control what everyone else does feel better, just like laws they can and will be disregarded by many.

The only way to not offend anyone is to do nothing – and hide to make sure no one notices you’re doing nothing because if they do there will be those who complain because of that.

Few realize that there is no consensus on best practices for much of anything. That is especially true if they tend to choose peers and friends who are much like themselves.

One of my close collaborators and Social Media expert Kristi Hines wrote a point-by-point rebuttal in the comments of Tad’s Twitterquette post that is worth reading because it includes some excellent advanced strategies and insights on using Twitter.

That is why I often do polls like my Spam or Not Spam poll that shows why using crowd-sourcing for Akismet will never work. I bet most bloggers think “everyone knows what spam is”. Guess again!

Bloggers definition of spam ranges from “any comment I don’t like” to “any comment from someone I don’t already know” to “any comment that links to a business” to “I might approve something IF I like it”.

You might notice that I often use “we” instead of “I”? That is because many of us collaborate and brainstorm best practices live every day in chat or Skype. I do not go by only my opinion on things. I bounce them off my most trusted collaborators.

Here are some comments from chat changed to protect the innocent and not reveal who said what:

• Ah, so you should probably just change your entire Twitter engagement then so he doesn’t have to see something he doesn’t want to see…LOL
• Seriously, one follower… got to make them happy…
• GrowMap:That’s kind of what I was thinking…hmmm…like I knew what it was he didn’t like (he tweeted a post to me asking me to stop “shouting” at him)
• Um, totally don’t understand what that means…Unless he’s not a fan of caps and he took offense to the GREAT ADVICE tweet…that would be silly [NOTE from GrowMap: I've started calling attention to key tweets by adding RECOMMENDED: or MUST READ: or GREAT ADVICE at the beginning of them - and received thanks from several for doing that so they don't miss those.]
• Oh, maybe #7… he doesn’t like reality… That must be the problem…
• GrowMap: That was what I thought at first – but then I realized he more likely meant I tweet too much OR he doesn’t like to see bad news and I’ve tweeted too much reality for his tastes lately
• Maybe he wants to live in fairy bubble land where only fluffy bunnies hop merrily around a grassy field
• Damn you for spreading reality into his world of sunshine!
• GrowMap:You’re cracking me up
• It’s my comedy hour of the day
• I guess everyone has their different offense-o-meter
• No acceptance of uniqueness
• GrowMap:People actually think that each and every person on the planet should do things exactly how they want them – and expect that we could read their mind and know that is
• Well, at least this guy knows what the real problem on Twitter is… not everyone is following his rules. Good to know!
• No kidding… I quite like people who share lots of links a day. And their older articles I might have missed.

Each of us must decide how best to accomplish what needs to be done. If we wish to be effective we may choose to heed some advice from people like Scobleizer. I highly recommend reading his very entertaining post about breaking Twitter rules.

Twitter netiquette rules are GUIDELINES
NOT worth getting all stressed out over!

Also believe the good advice offered by Guy Kawasaki in his posts How to Avoid Twitter Cluelessness and How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter.  Read his How to Change the World post to better understand WHY we need to be effective and influential wherever we are active including Twitter.

Yes, I do believe we must always be aware of what we are doing and how it affects others. Yes, I do believe we should do our best to limit flooding the Twitter timelines of followers who don’t use it the way I do when we can.

Click Image for B2B Twitter Tools

TWITTER TOOLS NEEDED:

We need tools like CoTweet, HootSuite, Simplify360, MarketMeSuite and others to provide us with a better way by automating our activities into rolling updates that put a time delay between tweets that we can adjust from minutes to hours to maybe even days.

We could use a way to tweet and RT the same tweet from multiple accounts and have the tool randomly change when those tweets are sent through.

ATTN: DEVELOPERS: We need these specific Social Media tools. If you have a tool we should see or are willing to build one, our group of Social Media Influencers are willing to alpha and beta test, provide detailed feedback and promote it for you in exchange for use of the tool.

We are all still developing best practices and have varying degrees of expertise using Twitter.  The link section below will assist anyone at any level to greatly increase their Twitter skills and influence.

Image Credit: Detrans.DeviantArt.com

TWITTER BEST PRACTICES:

• How to Get Started on Twitter
• Use Twitter Lists so you can find what you want and still follow those who follow you – and why you should
• How to Use Twitterfeed for a consistent Twitter presence
• Strategy for getting more Twitter followers interested in YOUR niche
• Better Twitter Retweets
• Twitter Tools for Managing Multiple Twitter Accounts
• Geo-targeting Twitter – also see How to Use Twellow
• CRITICAL for BLOGGERS: Put Your Twitter UserName on your BLOG!!!!

NEW:I pulled all those together in one post: Twitter Best Practices

People who are influencers on Twitter and who write blogs can create a better world for us all. If you’re serious about being influential I encourage you to contact me and to follow the other influencers I linked to in my Small Business Advice post.

If you are offering services to small businesses and would like recommendations contact me and see my post on priorities for Small Business Internet Marketing.

TIP to get the most out of my posts: I use links throughout my post to offer additional information. Anything underlined in blue text is a link. Point at the links and you will see a pop-up also called a mouse-over that contains additional information on what is at each link. As you read, use right-click > open in a new tab so you can read all the information of interest to you from each post.

Image credit @techgyo - Click to visit Dofollow CommentLuv blog

Many bloggers have already received an official email (copy below) letting us know that effective May 24, 2011 MyBlogLog is dead – another in a long line of valuable resources acquired and intentionally killed off.

This is another warning that selling a useful resource to those who want to control the Internet is a death sentence for that solution.

What do you think? Shall we delete our MyBlogLog widgets now or leave them on for a while yet? RIP MyBlogLog.

Watch this video (boring but important – note who is involved) created at Stanford University Forum about the proposed National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. Read the text on this post about Controlling the Internet and pay close attention to the coverage on Business Week about the recently proposed Internet Identity Authentication Plan.

At about 37 minutes in, what the CEO of McAfee Antivirus says includes these phrases:

“… exponential increase in crime … the amount of malware … amount of insidious things we receive” …“a major pandemic”… “rise of crime” …. “state of terrorism and warfare”

Malware is a pandemic?  He equates lack of proof of identity to terrorism. How DO these people keep a straight face?

I have never heard such tripe. Who is less trustworthy than government or the multi-national corporations who think nothing of experimenting on citizens without their knowledge as revealed in Freedom of Information requests and documented by National Geographic’s CIA Secret Experiments.

Truth IS stranger than fiction – this stuff really happened and is still happening. WAKE UP!

This proposal is an extreme threat to bloggers and blogging and I for one am sick of unwarranted fear being used to take away freedoms of all kinds. I for one say not just no but hell no to any more attempts to kill freedom of speech or expand the for-profit Law Enforcement Growth Industry.

If this nonsense actually gets implemented, those who refuse to further risk their freedom by registering for yet another system that can be used against us will either need a separate, private Internet – maybe something similar to the original bbs systems – or give up blogging and using the Internet altogether.

I encourage anyone who knows how to create an independent Internet – possibly using a private satellite – to contact me.

Dear MyBlogLog Customer,

You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.

After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit https://billing.yahoo.com.

Questions?
If you have questions about these changes, please visit the Yahoo! MyBlogLog help pages.

We thank you for being a customer on Yahoo! MyBlogLog.

Sincerely,

The Yahoo! My BlogLog Team

What say you, my readers who once loved MyBlogLog? Should we delete the widget now or keep it while it is still available? Leave a comment and let me know. I’m about to remodel so now is the time to know.

Bloggers and businesses in the same niche can use Blog Outreach to benefit each other.  I will be sharing tools for identifying influencers and allow us to track the effectiveness of our efforts. One I recommend bloggers join now is PostRank Connect. You may already know about PostRank.

This tool offers free Social Media Analytics numbers useful to bloggers and allows businesses to identify the influencers most active in their industries. I must have done something right lately as PostRank Engagement Points keep jumping. The image below shows I am up +33,121 points for February – an increase of 186%.

The image above is a snapshot taken from the page below. Click on the images to see larger versions that are easier to read. Sending you to the actual page won’t work because you would have to be logged into my account to access it.

Businesses can use PostRank data to pull up this type of information about any blogger by searching on their Web site URL. Below the Engagement Points section is another section that lists the Top Recent Posts on that blog and the engagement points by post:

These posts provide an instant clue into what is most popular on that blog. If it is related to what your business does or what you write about in your own blog you have found a potential collaborator.  PostRank has plans to make it easy for businesses to connect with bloggers. That feature hasn’t been launched just yet but you can get an invitation to see it as soon as it is available.

The Connect with this Publisher function is not live yet, but you can currently request notification by going to Connect.PostRank.com, searching on any blog URL and clicking the Green Connect with This Publisher button (on the right side of the page) that looks like this:

Once thatfeature is live (probably by March-April 2011), that button will be live.

BLOG OUTREACH:

• Compelling Reasons for Using Blog Outreach
• Blog Outreach Garden Bloggers

Related articles

• PostRank Analytics Preview from AdAge Power150 (growmap.com)
• 6 Tools for Engaging Your Top Influencers (oneforty.com)
• 6 Social Media Success Metrics You Need to Track (socialmediaexaminer.com)

*This is a guest post by Ann Smarty who started building MyBlogGuest.com, the free community of guest bloggers, 11 months ago and is now sharing her story and plans*

If you follow or frequent any resource by a popular pro blogger, you are most likely to have heard the term “guest posting” plenty of times. The thing is, everyone is talking about that, publishing guides and eBooks but seldom would you come across an actual tool that would help you get started.

So once I decided to try to build such a tool…

First Steps…

I’ve been guest blogging for as long as I have had  my own personal blog. Actually, all my online visibility I managed to build through the years has been achieved due to guest blogging.

A guest post brought me the position of a permanent blogger and then Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Journal (and now Director of Media at BlueGlass). Another guest post helped my blog to get discovered by smartest SEO audience. I’ve been promoting all my projects with guest posts and have long been an avid believer in the beauty of the win-win concept of guest posting.

Really, the idea behind guest blogging is genius: the author gets exposure through providing great content and the blog gets a killer post that attracts new readers and followers.

In fact, the idea is so great that it is almost impossible to organize and monetize without screwing the concept… And that was the first problem I was going to face.

I’ve always known guest authors and bloggers need a place to get connected and exchange guest posts. But how should it be implemented? Turning it into a well-organized marketplace was my initial idea. But I never ended up creating the marketplace. I suspected the “marketing” thing could spoil the initial idea.

Guest blogging is about building connections with popular bloggers in your niche – so I decided it would be a community…

Building MyBlogGuest.com

I knew most (successful) bloggers were busy and they would hardly manage to frequent yet another community (luckily we have plenty of networks)… And that was the second problem I was going to face.

I decided to stress upon the power of the concept and the innovative features that would help to organize the process without spoiling it.

I had no idea which of the features would turn really popular in the community where the main aim would be to exchange guest articles. So I decided to start with something basic and build new features following the community demands.

MyBlogGuest.com was launched about 11 months ago and has been getting new features ever since. The first year has been exciting. I consider it alpha period when we were developing the site while inviting new users.

We’d been playing and experimenting with various options until we at last entered our beta launch with the following main features:

• The discussion board: Here people can talk to each other, discuss post ideas, build contacts and advertise guest blogging opportunities.
• Advanced search: Users can search each other by tags, forum mentions and blog categories.
• Articles Gallery: If a user has an article he doesn’t know where to publish, he can upload it to the Gallery and wait for the blog owners to come (instead of looking for bloggers himself).
• Watch list: Users can organize new relationships they build using the feature and also set reminders to never forget apply to the offer or send a guest post.

How Can MyBlogGuest Turn Useful?

I didn’t want to turn this article into an advertisement. Instead, I wanted to share how the project had been built and developed. If you know what guest blogging can do for you and your brand, you can imagine how MyBlogGuest can be useful. If you are new to the concept, the most important benefits you should be aware of are:

• Increased exposure (getting your name heard on popular resources);
• Networking (if you are sincere in your effort to provide valuable content, bloggers will highly appreciate it and many of them will become your great friends and partners);
• Positioning yourself as expert (which will help you build trust and become niche authority with time).

Wow, I didn’t Mention Backlinks, Did I?

Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware of the backlinking benefit of guest blogging. However I don’t recommend making it your main focus.

Why so?

Very simple: this will prevent you from getting the idea right.

I know, link building has been a hot topic for such a long time, that it is hard to persuade people not to focus on it. But think about it this way: if you provide value and get well-networked in your niche, you won’t even have to build links anymore: the links will come on their own. People will link to you and cite your work without you even having to ask.

After all, link building is not about forcing links – it’s about getting links flow in on their own. And in this perspective, guest blogging (and MyBlogGuest) is the perfect way to get linked to (in a proper way).

So are you in? If you are willing to give it a try, join MyBlogGuest (it is free and easy!)

Only four more days before leading Social Media marketing experts share their expertise with Businesses, Marketing Strategists, PR Managers, Bloggers and Journalists in a premiere one-day event in San Francisco, California.

This is NOT your ordinary event. Media partners include Mashable, AdRants, Adotas, Rapleaf, pressdispensary, and The Bees Awards and the speaker list is beyond impressive.

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTS SPEAKING:

• Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks
• Mark Schmulen, General Manager of Social Media, Constant Contact
• Kristin Hersant, Vice President of Corporate Marketing – StrongMail
• Kath Pay, Co Founder – The Email Academy
• Chris McCann, Co-Founder of StartupDigest
• Chase McMichael, Co-Founder & CEO, InfiniGraph
• Jennifer Neeley Lindsay, Host of The A-List on BlogTalkRadio
• Mani Iyer, CEO Kwanzoo
• Jacob Morgan, Co-founder Chess Media Group
• Murray Newlands, Director, Influence People

Click the TweepML button to follow all or any of the Social Media Speakers listed above plus all the other speakers at upcoming InfluencePeople Social Media Events:

Still on the fence about going? Check the attendee list here to see who will be there. Today is the last day for Early Bird Tickets.

Save 10% – Enter Discount Code iem7 when purchasing tickets.

I’m not sure which is worse: doing Social Media badly or not getting started at all. As many have pointed out before me, you ARE being talked about whether you show up or not. The sooner you start integrating Social Media with Email Marketing and protecting your brand’s reputation the better!

Disclosure: Bloggers including me will receive 10% commissions on any tickets purchased using their unique discount code. If you are a blogger interested in writing about this or any future events or adding 125×125 ad blocks to your blog see details here.

Kelly over at 3BoysandaDog has an inspiring event going on in her Giveaway and Product Reviews blog she calls Blogger Appreciation Day.

She is asking bloggers to write a post about and link to the ten bloggers that referred them the most traffic over the previous month.

Blogger Appreciation Day – the perfect way to support the other bloggers who support you.

This edition coincides with the second birthday of this blog. I am usually so focused on writing and networking that I don’t look at analytics very often. Annually is a good time to check in and see where you are.

Kelly is offering a free month of ad space to a winner chosen from all the blogs that participate. Even if you don’t, do visit her blog and check out how the cool Linky Tools she uses works.

These are the blogs who sent me the most traffic between July 1 and July 31, 2010:

1. Search Engine Journal 57 visitors
2. CommentLuv 55 visitors – How CommentLuv works – How CommentLuv Grows Blogs and Businesses.
3. Kikolani 51 visitors Thanks Kristi – if you are a blogger and don’t read her posts regularly you are really missing out.  Great Blogging Tips plus how to promote your blog using Social Media. Kristi also writes for Search Engine Journal, Famous Bloggers, Social Media Examiner, Search Engine Watch, and Stay on Search.
4. iWoodpecker 49 visitors – see his CommentLuv Blogs List – Follow Allan on Twitter
5. SprawnyMarketing.pl – 48 visitors – I hope they see this link and contact me. I assume some of their readers read English; if they (or anyone else) would like to translate any of my content for readers whose native language is not English contact me.
6. Online Marketing Mashup – 43 visitors – Follow Zack on Twitter
7. BloggerLuv – 33 visitors – Follow BloggerLuv on Twitter – BloggerLuv is a rockin’ blogging community.
8. The Blog About Everything – Thanks Danny – 18 visitors probably most from the Does DoFollow Hurt PageRank debate.
9. Tech-Link Blog – 17 visitors – Thanks Paul – Check out his Cricket Cell Phone reviews before you buy another phone.
10. AffiliateXFiles Affiliate Marketing Blog – 16 visitors – Thanks Ron – If you want to know anything about Affiliate Marketing ask him. No one does article marketing as well as he does. Ron has been doing an entire series on Facebook Marketing that may interest many.

Thank you to the bloggers above and all the other bloggers who read GrowMap, link to my content, or approve my comments. Without you GrowMap would not have achieved what it has.

Easy way to follow your choice of the bloggers listed above:

To make comparing more fun, here are the stats I published on the First GrowMap Birthday post. (Numbers for first year, second year and total.)

YEAR ONE / YEAR TWO /  TOTAL

1. Published posts, 130 / 84 / 214
2. Active comments 2,402 / 5,777 / 8,179
3. Subscribers 1,300 / 747 / 2,047
4. Twitter Followers (Not included in my first post, but included now for future comparisons): 12,024

My thoughts on these stats:

1. While focusing on publishing posts daily is a good idea, interacting with your readers in the comments and promoting your posts across Social Networks are also necessary. Finding the balance and getting processes in place to keep all the plates spinning is a challenge I am continually working to improve. This year I spent a lot of time promoting the efforts of others and doing what is best for all. That is currently a higher priority than my own blog. As the processes come together posting here more regularly will happen.
2. As you can see, comments boomed here. That is a great indication that my readers are interested in specific content and have much to contribute. Thank you to every person who comments here – you add so much more to every discussion. Comments take a ton of time to manage well. I prefer to answer every comment because my readers deserve to be heard and acknowledged. That is not always possible in as timely a manner as I wish, but I do answer as many comments as quickly as I can.
3. I do not feel we can get a clear picture from subscriber numbers. Many people don’t actually read what they subscribe to, some read newsletters if you have one, others subscribe to comments and come back that way.
4. I recently came across a tool that tells you which Twitter followers are interacting and which are broadcasting. I’ve been pondering whether to unfollow those who don’t actually communicate on Twitter; however, for now I believe seeing the content they share is too important to me to give up. With the introduction of Twitter lists there is no reason to limit Twitter followers because we can easily zero in on those we interact with most.