Fluent Search Marketing

Tim O’Reilly hosted a webex presentation for his new book on Twitter. #twitterbook. They shared their strategies and here are some highlights.

Tim shared his process for collecting tweetable content throughout the day and metering out his tweets across the timespan of the day. Being thoughtful and mindful of the type of content that various constituants would be interested in based on time of day. Example: programmers are up late at night, so he saves his technical tweets until late in the evening. And another example: He tweets European-focused information during times when the Europeans are most likely online.

He also sees himself as a filter of information for the people that follow him. He does due dilligence on most of his ReTweets and all of his Tweets. Example: he will check out the linked site to see if it is legit and then write a new tweet to give his perspective on the content.

A link to a site about MINDCASTING. A term I had not heard of, review to come shortly.

Advanced Search Features

On the advanced tab of twitter you can gather very specific types of information for research.

the twitter retweet and activity tale

Most of the activity on a given tweet happens within the first few minutes of the tweet. So Tim spaces his tweets out across the day. And if the information is important, he will ReTweet himself, perhaps rewrite the tweet, several times during the day or week depending on his objective.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitterbook-r

Related Content:

• Fire Everything! – Twitter Facebook LinkedIN Convergence – What’s Okay What’s Not
• Twitter 1-2-3 Guide
• The Art and Science of the ReTweet Or ReTweeting with a Twist
• Twitter’s Global Influence Grows: Innovate, Communicate or Be Left Behind
• Friends, Tweeps, Links and Groups: Placing Value On Community and Friendship
• myTwitter Runneth Over – How Do You Manage To Filter 1000+ Friends?

I want you to see these, because these are the videos I was thinking about making but didn’t. Here are some prime tips on blogging, adsense and gaining traffic and followers for your writing.

So if you get this far, and I need to listen to the full Ad Sense one, then it is time to put these ideas into practice.

And then really… Focus on your content. Even writing for an audience of 10 gets your blogging muscles flexing. And the more you blog the more you will come up with ideas and ways of expressing your passions.

Thanks to copyblogger for putting these out, for free.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/wordpress-training

The video links on CopyBlogger:

1. How to Get More Search Engine Traffic With One Simple Tweak
2. How to Make More Money With AdSense
3. Feedvertising: Make Money With Your RSS Feed
4. More Feedback, Less Spam: WordPress Contact Form Plugin
5. How to Increase Comments and Page Views With One Quick and Easy Plugin
6. How to Stop Comment Spam without Lifting a Finger
7. Back Up Your Blog or Risk Losing It All

There are amazing tools and websites set up to help you do your web site better. Today I am focusing on performance and validating functionality. Several tools are Firefox plugins and some are web based. So lets get started with site performance first:

My favorite validation tool is Is My Website Working
A Great Site for Checking Your WordPress Compression and Caching. Here is what the results look like on my personal blog uber.la.

And let’s run it on FluentSearch as well.

So if uber.la is SLOW at 1.12 seconds, then Fluent is WAY SLOW at 4.39 seconds. I have not migrated Fluent from my old servers. Uber.la was really hammering my old host and causing not only problems for my visitors but problems for the host as well. Doesn’t seem possible, but my little ol’ neck of the web was being punished my constant stream of 3 – 5 concurrent visitors. Even with caching on I was getting timeout errors.

But the move was not easy. Anyone reading Fluent here, have any good tools for migration, besides the old export/import process? I couldn’t get the target URL to resolve to the actual domain until the DNS servers had been updated. So a lot of my uber.la images were pointing to something like this 128.33.3.33/uber.la/images…  and that little IP address string was wreaking havoc on my site. But I can’t figure out how to do the import, into a live WordPress site, unless the WordPress site is UP. And I could only access the pre-DNS transferred site with the IP address included. UG! There’s got to be a better way.

Okay, next tool.

+++

Compete’s Site Profile Extension
See what Compete Sees for Any Site

This information is displayed in the bottom edge of the browser. I’d like to know what “Neutral” is. And at the moment I DON’T accept ads on uber.la so my “Deals” and $$ sections are grayed out.

And from the looks of the preferences panel they need to update for BING.

+++

Google’s Page Speed Extension

This is a variation on the Y-Slow from Yahoo. They are both FireBug additions. So you have to have FireBug installed first.

Here is what Page Speed reported about FluentSearch.

Yikes! I’ve got a little work to do.

And here’s how Y-Slow runs the same report.

Double Yikes!

Let’s run them on uber.la just for comparison.

Page Speed

And Y-Slow:

Well I guess I don’t always do what I say. I will look over these reccomendations this weekend and see if I can improve both sites.

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The BING and GOOGLE Comparinator (sounds like something from Phenias and Ferb, but okay)

One of the best ways to understand Bing’s new humanized-search function is to compare it to the Google results.This little tool does a bit of the work for you. The first screen is merely a search entry box. But when you do a search here’s what you get:

I’ll do a deeper exploration into Bing in a later post. But go poke around and see what you like and what you don’t. It’s a new dawn in search. Certainly not a Google-killer, but perhaps a Yahoo-hurting-2nd-tier search option.

So that’s 5 tools for today (plus Firebug, makes 6, so even a Bonus Tool!)

Go have at it.

Let me know if you have other favorites in the comments or by contacting me directly.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/SEO-Tools

[Crossposted from FluentSearch.com]

the new wordpress 2.8 dashboard page

and the plug-in management page has some nice new options:

wordpress 2.8 plugin management page

I’m not a big fan of the varying row coloring. When sorted by ACTIVE or INACTIVE or UPGRADES AVAILABLE the rows are all the same color. But without explanation it looks like the alternating row highlighting might be messed up. But it’s not… WP is merely identifying the status of the plugins via color. Nice touch, perhaps a little add to the row itself that would define the color (an icon maybe) as a status indicator. MINOR TWEAK STILL NEEDED.

And last, for this quickie, I am going to look at the Widget management system. This area has undergone some major interface overhauls, some GOOD some BAD some downright UGLY.

First the overall Widget management screen.

wordpress 2.8 widget management screen

Dragging additonal widgets from the left (white portion) of the screen to the right section (in this case, sidebar 1) does just what you think it would. Adds a widget to the sidebar.

But here is the first disconnect with the new design. There is a major functional element that is completely missing from this screen. Hint, I have already added a new text box widget to the sidebar at this point. I have added my content and closed the collapsable widget window. (Oh and can we decide if they are WIDGETS, APPLICATIONS or PLUGINS and just go with that, cause we call them all three and I’m confused sometimes.)

So in previous versions of WP (this is WordPress 2.7.1 what would be prominently displayed as a NEXT STEP on the Widgets page looks like this:

wordpress 2.7.1 widget management

I like a few of the design/user interface changes in WordPress 2.8. But the REMOVAL of the SAVE CHANGES button is a HUGE MISS. (I will log this problem on the Wordpress.org site shortly. If you agree please weigh in on the opensource site.)

I guess for us WordPress workers, the warning notice at the top of the 2.7.1 page was a bit redundant. But WordPress funtionality should be for the nOOb as well as the experienced user. And in this case, as an experienced user, I DID NOT SAVE MY CHANGES and I LOST THEM. And here’s the problem.

wordpress 2.8 widget save issue

In the example above you can see two widget editing windows open. In the top one I have added some code to the CloudClip.net site that displays the BETA logo. In the second widget window, you will notice that I have the LINKS widget open. And here is where the disconnect begins.

The modal window functionality (meaning the things that you can do within the window only while it is showing) are REMOVE, CLOSE and SAVE. Okay. I can even live with the fourth “automatically add paragraphs” checkbox in the Text widget window, though I think there’s a better place for it.

So stay with me on this.

If I have just added the Text Widget and I hit SAVE at the end of my edit, no problem. I can close the window or move on to a different screen and my changes have been saved. (Both SAVED within the modal window and SAVED in the OVERALL WIDGET MANAGMENT SENSE, like the SAVE button in the 2.7.1 example above.

However… If you merely move a widget around within the Sidebar 1 window, WHERE or HOW do you SAVE your changes?

wordpress 2.8 sidebar widget managment

The answer is, you don’t. And if you move a widget position within this window and go off about your business elsewhere you will find that your rearrangement was NOT SAVED. Just like the warning on the 2.7.1 screen. “Save your changes…” But there’s no button to do it with.

The work around I have come up with is this. After you have made some positioning edits and BEFORE you move on to any other screen, open any of the widget edit windows and use the SAVE button there.

The easiest fix would be to add the warning and the SAVE button back to the bottom of this sidebar management window.

Oh, this problem arises when you ADD A WIDGET to the sidebar as well. Where normally you could drag the widget onto the sidebar and SAVE, now in 2.8 you drag the widget into position. And if you don’t open an edit widget window and SAVE again, you will lose the changes. I spent 15 minutes reorganizing and adding to a sidebar only to find that the changes were not magically auto-saved.

So there are a couple things I like about the new 2.8 widget management system. But there are a few User Interface issues that I think should be addressed immediately. Because as I am teaching people that WordPress is the WAY, they are going to get really lost with this SAVE CHANGES issue. Heck, I bet I loose another 20 edits before I start making my work around part of my normal workflow.

MAJOR USER INTERFACE FAIL. Please fix immediately.

UPDATE 11PM 6-11-09 Due to some reader feedback and a few more hours working with WordPress 2.8 I have an update:

On the Widget Mangement page you can use the “Screen Options” tab to “Enable accessibility mode.”

While this does not fix the missing SAVE button problem, it does add back the ADD and EDIT links on the specific tabs of the modules you want to edit.

And it does one more nice thing. When you open a module to edit, instead of popping open a window, the “accessibility mode” opens the editing process in a single window. And what this does is force you to SAVE before moving on. And as it should, SAVING closes the window and brings you back to the widget dashboard. [That's a big reason to enable accessibility, do it now, I'll wait.]

accessibility enabled widget editing

Downgraded to MEDIUM INTERFACE FAIL once Accessibility Features Have been enabled. Please Fix. And while waiting make the Accessibility setting the default.

Uploading Media. And one more nice addition. Now when uploading media, WordPress 2.8 remembers which uploading process you like to use. I HATE the FLASH Uploader in WP, Facebook and NING. And now I don’t have to click “simple upload browser” to get to the HTML driven tool. Here is the screen that comes up consistently now that I have auto-set that preference by switching once to the Browser Uploader.

For the WordPress’s ability to set my uploader preference without requiring a “KILL FLASH UPLOADER” plugin. Nice touch. MAJOR WIN.

+++

That’s it. Some HUGE wins. And I am only one day into the usage. A few tweaks and one fail. Not bad. I wish I had been able to participate in the beta over the last few days and gotten this request in BEFORE yesterday’s release, but I was swamped in meetings all day.

Congratulations WordPress World and WordPress workers! It is a beautiful upgrade. [Now I'm off to upgrade my other 30+ WordPress sites. ;^P ]

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/review-wordpress-28

NOTE: Since writing this piece I have used WordPress 2.8 in the new Safari (v4) on the Mac. WOW. It works BETTER than Firefox, as in noticeably faster. Check it!

How To Get Your Blog To Rank In Google by Lisa Barone

Be passionate about your subject: Okay, so your blog is going to be about your business or industry, that’s a given. But who’s going to be the person responsible for blogging? Just because you’re the head honcho, doesn’t mean that responsibility is best placed on you. Find the person who is most passionate about your company, the industry and what you do. That’s the person you want to be writing about it because that type of enthusiasm and energy is infectious. If you’re loving what you do, your customers will see that. And they’ll want to know what you’re up to. If the person who cleans your building is the most passionate person in the world about your company, let them blog.

Find your niche: There are a lot of blogs out there. If you’re going to capture attention, you need to give people a reason to care about you. That means staying away from the “this is what I did today” style of blogging and giving them something that interests them. Just be who you are and then find ways to build out. If you’re a pizzeria, write a blog about running that pizza shop. Over time, you can get into how to make pizza, eating healthy pizza, etc. You don’t want to over reach at the beginning. Your goal isn’t to be everything to everyone; it’s to attract the people who are most inclined to care about what you’re offering.

The post goes on to cover a few more topics.

Use WordPress.
Use Keywords in your titles and in your writing.
Optimize your URL structure.
Attract Links.

But in my book the main ones are BE PASSIONATE and FIND YOUR SWEETSPOT.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/tipstobloggers

(Is search dead now that social media is king? I don’t think they can live apart, but together they make a synergistic knockout punch.)

Here is my ten minute presentation on SEO, Search and Social Media.

Google PPC/Adwords
1. Use adwords dollars to understand your market and what terms have power
2. Adwords can inform your SEO work in a matter of days, rather than weeks

SEO
1. Content is king, but if you dilute the content to become search bait, keywords don’t read all that well.
2. Create good content that people will forward.
3. A forward/share/digg all serve to up your backlinks or linklove in the eyes of Google search
4. Do your homework about SEO structures. (Did you know META is almost worthless? Google ignores 90% of META descriptions anyway. They do use META: “title” and META: summary. But your keywords in META only make it easier for your competition to scoop your SEO work.
5. Read your competitors code. If they use META KEYWORDS the are showing you their word matrix. Compare notes. Find the best 20 terms.
6. Make your content easy to index, easy to find, and refresh your pages requently.
7. Produce a lot of good content.
8. Aggregate the heck out of your content, make sure you are sharing it with as wide an audience as possible. (Note: if your content is SEO bait, your forwards, retweets and favorites will be low.)
9. Give away the secrets. If you provide insights and value to your readers they will read your content. They will forward and link to the good stuff. (Nobody forward boring content, unless they are paid to.)
10. Be social. Keep your comments open. When someone else comments, respond. Join other communities and join the conversation.
11. Don’t push your content down the wrong channels. Or better yet don’t push your content at all.
12. Make your site and content juicy for spiders.
13. Keep it clean and simple. Too many keywords, content that is written solely for the purpose of generating traffic is very unlikely to go viral.
14. Go viral. If what you have written is good, controversial, over the top, informative, really good, or funny, you have a chance of getting noticed. If it’s boring, or marketing-speak, you don’t. Simple as that.
15. If you’re so smart, share your toolkit with the rest of us. We are all in this together. Everyone is trying to do it better, faster, cheaper. But we have to focus on the BETTER first and foremost. If you define a better way to do something share it. If you have a GTD secret that is kicking ass, share it. If you know something we don’t share it.
16. Good content wants to be free. And by setting it free you enable the traffic and links to build without your efforts.

If you put your content behind a firewall, or plan to charge for it, be ready to a serious drop in traffic. Maybe you can make up for that by charging and entrance fee… But maybe not. I’m putting up a New York Times case study shortly where we can benchmark their performance as they go to a PPV 3.0 model again. PPV 3.0 (Pay-per-view 3.0 = social media, search and seo, how can we make social media PAY!?

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/seo-tip