Here’s a search tool that you can use to see what people are talking about on social media sites. WhosTalkin is a great way to find out what others are saying about your business or your field. Just type in your search term and WhosTalkin will search all the social media site for matching conversations and return results in a few minutes. Social Media Search Engine, WhosTalkin, Recently Integrated Facebook’s New API, Giving The Search Tool Unrepresented Reach. Pawleys Island, SC (Content by PRWEB) October 5, 2010 Social media search engine, WhosTalkin, recently integrated Facebook’s new API, giving the search tool unrepresented reach. WhosTalkin is a social media search engine that searches real time conversations from around 60 different social media gateways. Adding Facebook, marks a significant step for the almost 2 year old search company. Along with the Facebook addition, WhosTalkin, is also launching a new aggregation engine, a new real time metric, and the ability to export results directly from the search tool. Joe Hall, founder and CEO says, "We knew that in order to integrate Facebook, we would need to change the way we aggregate data to facilitate large scale searching." As a result, WhosTalkin has launched a new aggregation engine that now powers their service. Hall says, "We are very happy with initial test." The new engine will allow WhosTalkin’s developers to easily add new social media gate ways over time. "The social web is constantly changing, so we wanted our new system to be able to change and grow with it." says Hall. The new aggregation engine has opened doors for Hall to launch other features as well. "We are also launching a new metric that we think gives a very accurate picture of the level of conversations in social media." states Hall. TalkRank is a new unique metric that gauges the level of conversation in social media. TalkRank is different than other social media metrics because its based on live data. Users can continually check TalkRank to monitor trends. Along with the new aggregation engine, the search tool now also allows for instant exporting of results. The search results can be directly exported into Microsoft Excel. In the future the search company plans to provide other formats. ### For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebsearch/facebook/prweb4592424.htm
New Look and Features Coming To Twitter This Fall
If you use Twitter to promote your business get ready for a a change this fall. Many people like Twitter because its minimalist design and easy of use. But as the site grows Twitter is looking for was to maintain its lead as a social media powerhouse. Do you visit the website or just post your Tweets? Here’s a video Twitter release to YouTube showing some of the upcoming changes: What do you think about the planned changes? Helpful? Here’s more information on the upcoming changes provided by the folks at Twitter. New design You will now find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists just above your timeline ““ creating a single, streamlined view on the left of the screen. On the right, you can see the features you’re familiar with, including whom you recently followed and who recently followed you, favorites, and Trending Topics. View photos, videos, and other media content Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube. Discover related content When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: @replies, other Tweets by that same user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more. Mini profiles You can click a @username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets. Follow @Twitter Rollout timing These changes will roll out as a preview over the next several weeks. During the preview, you’ll be able to switch back and forth so you have time to grow accustomed to the way things work. Eventually, everyone will have the updated version of Twitter.com. So what do you think? Think Twitter has something good coming down the pipeline or do you think that things should be left alone? Feel free to contribute and leave a comment below. Posted Dennis J. Smith with content by Twitter
5 Must Have Social Media Plugins for WordPress Blogs
With the explosion of Social Media many bloggers are discovering the power of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and LinkedIn to name a few. With WordPress plugins you or your readers can share your blog postings with others just with a click of the mouse. Here are 5 plugins for Social Media that I think are the must haves if you are serious about promoting your business or cause. Update: Some of these plugins have been discontinued or have not been updated by their developers. WP FB Like With the exploding popularity of Facebook this is a must have plugin because it post to the king of social media. WP FB Like is easy to setup and will add the Facebook “Like” Button at the top and bottom of all your post or pages. When your reader clicks on the button a link to your blog post is added to their Facebook wall. If their friends click on the link they are sent to your blog and directly to the post. Update: This plugin hasn’t been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress. Sexy Bookmarks Here is a WordPress plugin that does it all when it comes to sharing out your blog post. Sexy Bookmarks lets you pick and choice the social media networks you’d like your readers to share to. Plus you can drag and drop them into the position you’d like them to display on your page. You can display the social media networks at the top or bottom of your post. There over 80 social networks to choose from but I would suggest that you keep it under 20 so as not to overwhelm your readers. WP Google-Buzz With all the buzz about Google Buzz and Google’s jump into the social media arena you’ll want this plugin for sure. If you prefer to keep a minimalist look to your blog you might want to consider going with just a few buttons. Facebook, Twitter, Digg and maybe even MySpace depending on the demographics of your readers. WP Google-Buzz is easy to configure and has several customization choices to fit any bloggers needs. Update: This plugin has been discontinued Disqus Comment System This plugin replaces the default WordPress commenting system by adding elements that will drive more traffic to your blog. Both new and repeat traffic can be generated from the use of this popular plugin. Most major newspapers and news organizations use Disqus on their websites. Readers can check a like button just like the FB like button and can post their comments to Facebook and Twitter. Readers can also subscribe by email or RSS and get notified when someone replies to their comment. What’s not to like about this plugin? PostRank PostRank shows off the top post on your blog and is updated automatically as the rankings change. The look and feel of the widget can be set to match the color of your WordPress theme. Monitor your PostRank scores and social media analytic metrics right from the WordPress dashboard. The PostRank plugin is easy to install and setup is a breeze. Keep in mind that it might take a few hours for the top post to start displaying. Wibya The ultimate social media plugin for your WordPress blog is the Wibya Toolbar. Integrate both your Twitter and Facebook Fan Page feeds into your blog along with a host of other choices. Show off your YouTube videos or pick what videos you’d like displayed. Customize the look and feel of the toolbar to match your WordPress theme. Do you use any of the above plugins with your WordPress blog? Have something else that’s a favorite? Please feel free to leave a comment below and add to this list by letting others know your recommendations. Interested in other WordPress Plugins? Check out this post from the blog ““ How To Make My Blog Best WordPress plugins ““ 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever If you know someone who could benefit from the information above please feel free to share with others. I appreciate it and hope you’ll return again. Thanks!
Being Social with Social Media On The Go or In The Air
The beauty of running your own business is that you are no longer tied down to the desk. With social media, a mobile hone and a laptop or even a new tablet PC you can promote your business while on the go. It doesn’t matter where you are at anymore to connect with the world and market your business. I’m at Brewforia Beer Market right now which is a business in Meridian, ID that sells over 500 different beers. Brewforia uses social media to connect with their customers by showcasing new product, what’s on tap and new food products. The relaxing environment and free Wi-Fi makes it possible for someone like myself to enjoy a beer, enjoy a craft bread (pizza) and write a blog post or market my business endeavors. Where do you enjoy hanging out when promoting your business? It’s pretty common to find Wi-Fi in every city around the US and Europe. Plus services such as Clear, Rover and Sprint offer 4G in 50 plus cities across the US. That means you could be sitting on a park bench and connected to the internet at super fast broadband speeds. Think about how relaxing that would be enjoying the warm fall sun while conducting business over the internet. I’ve even been connect to the internet while flying 36,000 ft. above the earth heading to Florida. GoGo Inflight Internet connects you to Wi-Fi while on board your cross country flight. Pricing starts around $4.95 per flight segment depending distance travelled. Visit their website for more information on pricing and how the service works. I’ve given you a few ways you you can promote your business while on the go or even in the air. Suggestions? Ideas? Feel free to comment below and start the discussion.
Latest Reviews of Promote Your Business or Cause using Social Media
Latest Reviews of Promote Your Business or Cause using Social Media By Social Media author Dennis J. Smith It’s been a few months since I first published my first book Promote Your Business or Cause using Social Media. I want to share with you some of the latest reviews and give you a chance to win your own copy. Johnna says “I’ve used Facebook as a marketing resource for years and "Promote Your Business or Cause using Social Media" taught me numerous NEW things I never used or maximized!" What would you like to learn about social media? All you have to do is register for my bi-monthly Social Media News Club. Which happens to be free! I’ll pick a winner at the end of this month and continue to do so each month through December 2010. Great Help!, July 22, 2010 Dennis J Smith helped guide me through the maze of options available. As a social media novice, the number of sites and formats for communicating my message was overwhelming, but the step by step guide let me identify which product was most effective. Dive into the social media pool with confidence!, July 9, 2010 Dennis J Smith has done a nice job of opening the door to the social media opportunities for people who have little or no experience with Facebook and other forms of this ever changing aspect of our electronic world. Dennis presents some practical ways to put various aspects of social media to work for your organization, business or cause. Read full review”¦ A must-read for small business owners!, July 6, 2010 With the social media craze, it’s difficult to know what’s out there, what it does and how to do it! Dennis does a great job of laying out some of the industry’s biggest players, the return you can see on your investment and most importantly, how to get started immediately! Read full review”¦
Promote Your Digital Product and Fatten Your Wallet With ClickBank
Looking for a way to promote your product or promote the product of others? Want to make money while you’re at it? With ClickBank you can promote your own products or promote the products of others and make money. ClickBank is based in Boise, Idaho and started back in 1998. There are thousands of digital product vendors on ClickBank and over 110,000 active affiliate marketers. You only need to create an account to get started and can either sell your own product or promote someone else’s product and get paid. Sell Digital Products Online “I earned about $250,000 during my senior year in college and within a year of graduation had crossed the million dollar mark.” Russell Brunson, Idaho, USA Do you have an e-Book you’ve written? How about computer software or a how-to guide? With ClickBank you can promote your product without a lot of overhead. The company will process orders for you via a secured and fraud proof system. You choose the price you want to sell your product for and pay them a one-time activation fee. All you have to do is create a landing page(web page) promoting your product and create some banner ads for affiliates. Affiliates are other people who are willing to promote your product for you by placing a hop link or banner ad on their website. Affiliates get a cut of your profits in the form of a commission when you make a sell. You can find lots of helpful information on selling basics here: ClickBank Selling Basics Promote Products in the ClickBank Marketplace “For anyone wanting to get started in affiliate marketing, ClickBank is the place to go. There are thousands of products to choose from and commission can be as high as 75%; you just won’t find that anywhere else.” Byron Walker, Colorado, USA If you don’t have product to sell but have a blog or a website you can still make money with ClickBank. Affiliate Marketing has been around for years and a great way to supplement your income. Once you have a ClickBank account you can promote any product in the ClickBank Marketplace. There’s thousands of products to choose from and something for everyone. Just find the product you like and generate a hop link to add to your blog or website. The hop link is coded so ClickBank knows who to pay commission if product is sold. Now you can share product with your Facebook friends using SocialPromote. Just click the “Like” button and ClickBank will create a hop and add it to your Facebook Stream. Make sure you are always signed in to your account when generating links or sharing out to Facebook. You can search the marketplace for products that will complement your blog or website. If you have a WordPress blog there are ClickBank plug-ins available that let you add ClickBank product to your blog with ease. Ready to get your feet wet with affiliate marketing or selling your own digital product? Head over to the ClickBank website and get your account ad get started today. Already using ClickBank? Feel free to comment below and share your thoughts with others. Sign Up for ClickBank CJM Marketing Specialties Content By Dennis J. Smith
Aksel Paris Launches Facebook Store (Who’ll Be Next?)
Content By SF Indie Fashion Here’s something we predict you’ll see more and more of very quickly: local fashion brands with Facebook stores. The first we’ve run across comes from Aksel Paris (don’t let the name fool you, the company’s actually based in SoMa). The menswear line recently launched the shop with six men’s shirts ($79-$89) from its Paris collection, and in true Facebook fashion, we hear the store will be offering special discounts just for fans. I wanted to share the short article above so my readers can see how others are using social media to sell product on sites like Facebook. Do you know of any other companies with Facebook stores? How are you using social media to promote your products or goods?
Promote Your Business With Effective Web Design 101
Web Design 101 for Business Your Virtual Storefront I’ve been creating website for over 15 years now, back when Netscape was the top browser. I’d like to share some of my tips regarding effective website creation and design. I come across poor website design all the time when surfing the net and there’s no shortage. When you first create a website you should think about layout and how others will navigate around your site. Do your research and find out what others are doing before you just toss together a site. Think of a website like a storefront in your local shopping mall. Your home page is much like a storefront because it’s the first thing your visitor will see. If its eye catching and always up-to-date then visitors will stay and view your site. If you walk by a store with a bad window display or the same as your last visit, what are the chances you are going to check things out? So you can see the importance of designing a functional home page. Keep it Clean with Relevant Content Don’t overwhelm someone with a lot of information on your home page. I recommend a mix of 70/30 depending on the type of site. Give your users about 70 percent content mixed with 30 percent graphics/images/ads to compliment your content. Ever had a hard time finding your keys in a cluttered room? Keep your visitors engaged in your content to keep them coming back. Make sure your content is relevant and optimized for search engines. Relevant content will keep the visitor on your website and hopefully purchasing your product or service. If someone walked into an electronic store and found books they would turn around and leave. Easy Navigation One of my favorite sites is DynamicDrive.com which offers lots of free cool stuff for web designers. Stuff that helps make your website stand out from others in the crowd. I mainly use the navigation tools they provide on my websites. Both SpreadViralVideo.com and MyVolunteer.com used navigation menus that I found on DynamicDrive.com. I’ve also used code that disables the “Submit” button after its been clicked. That way the user cannot click it a 2nd time, preventing duplicate information when they submit a form. There are lots of other resources out there to make your site look like a pro did the work. Research Other Sites While you want your creativity to be your own it’s a great idea to see what others are doing. I often check out the design of other websites to see what others are doing. I did this years ago when I first started creating web pages to learn the art of HTML. When I started I didn’t have the luxury of books or even classes on how to code HTML, JavaScript and other coding languages of the web. Now there are tons of books, online classes, software and online resources to make the task easier. Web Design Tools of the Trade I want to finish up with briefly talking about some of the tools of the trade. I have hard coded(straight HTML) websites in the past however I mostly use WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) software when developing my current websites. I don’t know about you but I don’t have a lot of free time, so I used FrontPage which became Expression 4 and is no longer available from Microsoft. I’m not part of a website team so I’m on my own when it comes to developing my websites. Therefore I use web design software that lets me crank out pages and a fast pace with a professional look. Besides Expression 4 other editors on the market were Adobe® Dreamweaver CS5 and Adobe® Creative Suite 5 to name a few. Most of these allow you to use a simple “Compose” mode to create your web pages. These editors make it easy for you to add images, navigation, links, create tables and other aspects of a web pages quickly. Those who know how to code can switch to the HTML mode to have more control of the design. Update 05/11/16 – Microsoft has ceased development on its Expression Web product. However they still offer free downloads Expression Web 4 but offer no support. It is possible some of the information in this post has become outdated and some products might not be available. I have since moved on to using WordPress as my choice for website creation. More web design software applications can be found on CNet’s site Download.com and are either free or try and buy trials. Most of the above software can usually be downloaded and tried out for 30 days or more before you buy. Give them a spin today and see what types of creations you can come up with. Do you have any tips to share with others? Have a favorite HTML editor? Feel free to comment below. By Dennis J. Smith
Payvment Expands Toolset For Power Facebook Sellers
Payvment, a leading e-commerce solution for Facebook Page administrators, has just introduced a number of new features including the ability for Etsy users to import their entire Etsy product catalog. Additionally, the company is releasing a suite of enterprise APIs for Facebook Stores. That means developers can now take advantage of the new IPN service, an Order Management API, a Shopping Cart API, and more, to automate the entire Facebook shopping experience. For those who are less aware of what Payvment is, they provide Facebook Page administrators with a full-fledged e-commerce solution which supports shopping and payments on the site. Right now the service is free to set up. The company’s business model has enabled them to reach tens of thousands of Facebook Pages with very little promotion aside from a small footer on each shopping tab which says “Launch your free store on Facebook” and links back to Payvment. While the volume of e-commerce transactions on Facebook is not known, many companies have been taking new steps to offer on-Facebook transaction support. Delta, for example, just announced that they would begin accepting purchases directly within their Facebook Page. Whether or not these tests have proven to be successful is unknown, however there’s no harm in enabling buyers to make purchases anywhere they happen to be online, even if that location is Facebook. While we’re still waiting to hear more about the transaction volume of sales on Facebook, Payvment is currently the leading company in bringing e-commerce to Facebook. If you are interested in learning more about the company you can do so by visiting their website. Article by Neil O’Neill of AllFacebook.com Read more about Payvment for Facebook in my August 2010 article.
Promote Your Business or Cause Offline
Besides promoting your business or cause online using social media, you still have to use some traditional offline marketing. The internet has made it easier to use those traditional ways for marketing and keep the cost down. In promoting a few of my business endeavors I came across VistaPrint.com. I took the advice of a friend and picked up a copy of a local business journal. From that I was able to gather the names of new businesses and their addresses. I then created a database using a contact database template I downloaded for free from Microsoft. I was able to add the information to the database and then use Word to print labels for the postcards I designed. The postcards were easy to create online and keep the look and feel of my book. I slapped on the labels and a $.28 cent postcard stamp. The 100 postcards were free thought VistaPrint (special promotion) and I only paid for shipping plus for a few modifications I had made. Besides postcards there are many ways to catch the eye of a potential customer. You could create a t-shirt with your businesses logo and web address and give it away as a prize. With websites like VistaPrint you can even get your first t-shirt free plus shipping. There are tons of ways you can promote your business or cause offline and bring those new customers to your online endeavors. Since I am promoting a book I used Overnight Prints and created a bookmark that I handout to potential customers. The bookmark is something they can use and is always reminding others on where they can buy my book or join the Facebook fan page. Make sure you add all important information such as Facebook page, Twitter User Name, blog address or website URL. Keep your theme the same for all promotional items to make your brand stand out. Notice how the postcard above has the same look at the bookmark to the left. Both have the same look as the cover of my book. Have fun with your promotion and feel free to post a comment with link to your offline promotional designs.