This is an example of the “New Twitter Spam” that is going around. Things like this don’t really surprise me anymore because hijacking someone comments is nothing new and this would be a variation of that for sure. This twitter account posts the old style RT every 10-20 minutes however, the accounts mentioned or inferred as the owner, never actually sent that tweet.

The following scenario is just from my observations and a little bit of research.

There are 5 accounts that benefit from this in some way by leveraging the reputation of the account mentioned in the RT. The first is the obvious spammer @TandyDando8156 by doing RT at the very least the person that is mentioned is going to check it out. This account, since its sole purpose is to drive traffic, is expendable.

The other accounts mentioned in the tweet are a little more difficult to assess the purpose and intent. This is a clear case of hijacking someones reputation for their own benefit. The most likely culprit of the accounts mentioned is the affiliate account @getskinnyfaster as they would have the most to gain financially. Some affiliates are known to push the envelope on what would be considered acceptable for their benefit.

The other 3 accounts, @kmrpr, @jasonader, and @davenmichaels are more legitimate but there is one that throws up a red flag as the possible mastermind behind this. There is no way of telling for sure without an in depth analysis but I’ll let you decide which one you think it is.

This looks more like a “test account” strictly to determine the effectiveness of this one scenario. The laziness of choosing the same four accounts tells me this and only posting the same information over and over again.

The scenario would look like this: the spammer account would promote the affiliate account to make money. The account would also include in other legitimate accounts and possibly one of their other personas online as well in order to give the account a “real person” feel to it.

In essence the spammer steals the reputation of the legitimate twitter accounts to make a profit for himself/herself. I would put this in the same category with the tabloid magazines using sensational headlines and altered photos of celebrity persons to sell more magazines. However, this is for another discussion.

Have you seen this or other twitter spam? Let me know and leave a comment below.

Today at BarCamp Sarasota we decided to Occupy Sarasota – Techies Take Over Gwiz with a little demonstration on using SEO effectively

But is that about to change?

Did you know that Facebook users are now apparently for sale? That your information is being sent to the highest bidder with the deepest pockets and your information is being used as an implied endorsement for their products!

By default everyone is opted into this program which automatically shares your information with their “partner” sites. I say partner sites because even though I haven’t seen a disclosure on it anywhere. I’m sure Facebook is getting well compensated for doing this.

This is great for marketers (such as myself) but really bad for the consumer who is generally unaware that such practices are being done ever so quietly. At least Facebook has learned from Google’s debacle when they launched Buzz…Facebook has made a way for you to opt out of it.

Here’s how to change your privacy setting to opt out of this instant personalization

Step 1: Navigate to your privacy settings

Step 2: Go to Apps and Website settings

Step 3: Select edit settings for Instant Personalization

Step 4: Un-check the box “Enable instant personalization”

Don’t forget to tell your friends to do the same or they can share your information as well.

Quality Content

The entire purpose of a link is to reference something of quality and relevance (I’ll get to that in a second) and somehow that gets looked over by people with they build a website and expect that other website owners will automatically want to link back to them. If you content isn’t coherent and resembles something that was put through an article spinner somewhere then why do you think anyone will want to link to your site?

Definition of Quality

high grade; superiority; excellence

As you can image I get requests for backlinks all the time but 99% of what I receive doesn’t fall into the definition of quality (not by a long shot).

Tip: The quality of your content will determine if someone will be willing to link to you.

Site Relevancy

When I first started doing SEO professionally in 2004 one of the old practices was to do link swap with anyone and everyone. We created large link directories on our sites and tried to get thousands of sites to exchange links with us. We used large networks of sites to build 3 way links to look more natural but ultimately as the internet has progressed that became a waste of time since what our site visitors really wanted was something that was relevant to what they were looking for.

Since then the SEO algorithms have changed a few times and have emphasized the importance of a relevant site linking to you.

Tip: Before having a ton of sites link to you find ones that are relevant and get them to link to you first.

Quantity of Content

It amazes me when I have a client as why their site isn’t ranking well for hundreds of term and they only have 5 pages on their website. The obvious reason is the quantity of the content that they have. Keep in mind that the quality of the content is a given. It has to be good. Site owner often don’t update their sites often enough and think that after they build it once everyone should come running to the site. This just isn’t the case but a lot of website owners think it is.

This may surprise most website owners but most need to increase the quantity of the content that produce. It’s the only way to have massive amount of links pointing back to your site barring a lot of press and media exposure.

Tip: Create a content creation schedule and determine how often you will publish new content to your site.

Just in case you got lost in the reading here’s what you need to do. Produce quality content on a regular basis and find relevant sites to link to you. When all else fails hire an seo.

image credit: ivanpw

I can hear all the excuses now running through your head…

• I don’t understand SEO.
• I’m not a tech geek.
• I don’t write code.
• I can barely turn on my computer.
• My website sucks!
• and on and on and on…

The big reasons most website owners don’t do SEO very well is that they over complicate it. Here’s the simple, easy non-technical way to do it.

But first let me get you up to speed…

Clue #1

How other website link to you in the anchor text is very important. Anchor text just in case you were wondering is the word that you click on to view another website. As an example you can read about me here <== that’s anchor text.

the words that are highlighted that create the link are what you want other website owner to use your keywords in. If you have enough webpages linking back to your site with that keyword phrase you will be #1 in the search engine.

Here’s a little test for you. If you type “click here” in the search box in google the number 1 listing is for Adobe. But Why? Adobe doesn’t have anything to do with click here. However, website owner provide their users with pdf documents and for them to be able to view it the put verbiage such as this. “To Download your free Adobe Reader Click Here” and then they link click here to Adobe.

Just remember if you website is about “search engine optimization” then make sure your keywords are part of the link.

Clue #2

Have your title tag match your anchor text.

Now wait a minute…What is a title tag? I know I promised I wouldn’t be technical but consider this a bonus.

Here’s what the title tag looks like in the code.
<title>your keywords go here</title>

In your internet browser

(click image)

In the Search Engine Results Page

(click image)

So let’s take a look at the two clues and how you can use them.

First get people to link to you with your keyword phrase in the anchor text and then make sure your anchor text matches your title tag as closely as possible. If these are the only things you ever know and really understand about SEO everything else from there is just gravy.

Now that you know how easy it is ask your difficult question below

What is Barcamp Sarasota?

BarCamp Sarasota emphasizes the intersection of technology, education, and economic development. The open forum format focuses on business solutions, and people who specialize in application development and programming languages, web and graphic design, social media, film, marketing, and other areas where business and technology come together.

BarCamp Sarasota is part of an international network of user-generated conferences and participatory workshop events. BarCamps are ad-hoc gatherings born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment, and the belief that the best learning at any conference takes place while networking with other professionals between scheduled sessions.

Join BarCamp Sarasota, learn more about the BarCamp Sarasota conference event, and find the LinkedIn group. Join and get involved to help grow and promote our community’s technology, education, and business strengths. You can learn more about the spirit of BarCamp at the BarCamp wiki page.

Register for free for the Oct 9th Barcamp Sarasota Event

Register Here Today!

This is an excerpt from the Burson-Marsteller blog

Following in the footsteps of consumers, large international companies are now becoming active participants in social media. A recent Burson-Marsteller study found that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.

Like the Fortune 100 study found, Twitter is the social media platform of choice among the Fortune Global 100. The study found that 65 percent of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook fan page, 50 percent have a YouTube channel, and one-third (33 percent) have corporate blogs. Only 20 percent of the major international companies are utilizing all four platforms to engage with stakeholders.

Companies’ platform preferences also differed among regions. Companies based in the United States and Europe are more likely to use Twitter or Facebook than they were to have corporate blogs, while companies from Asia-Pacific were more likely to utilize corporate blogs than other forms of social media. However, Asian companies will use Twitter or Facebook to communicate with Western audiences (for example, Toshiba).

It also appears that some companies are getting more comfortable using social media as they are interacting and engaging more and not just broadcasting corporate messages. Companies using Twitter are following an average of 731 people each and 38 percent of companies are responding to people’s tweets (for example, Vodafone UK). Thirty-two percent have also “re-tweeted” or reposted user comments during the last week (like Verizon Careers).

Apparently not. B2B mag announced yesterday that Yahoo Japan is going with Google!

Tokyo—Spurning the pending Yahoo-Microsoft search implementation in the U.S. and other countries later this summer, Yahoo Japan Corp. has rejected Microsoft Corp.’s Bing in favor of Google as its default search engine.

My question is Why?

We all remember last year on CNBC when Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

If the internet is about being open and transparent as they want us to believe then why is there a need for any such privacy?

As I continued to read the blog post one particular phrase caught my attention:

Searching over SSL doesn’t reduce the data sent to Google — it only hides that data from third parties who seek it.

Read that again…

it only hides that data from third parties who seek it.

Google still knows what you are searching. I think the thing that is transparent here is that Google is an advertising company who just happens to be in the search engine game.  There are plenty of third party applications that rely heavily on data from Google. The ones that I see being adversely affected by this new encrypted search are the small advertising companies and software companies that are not going to be able to pay for that kind of information from Google. Particularly the firms that focus on SEO and PPC.

I’m sure that there are many other area of your life that Google would like to “control” as they place order to the world via the internet. Is this just another way to gain control of our personal information?

Is this just another tactic to regain control over our private information? Tell me what you think. Leave a comment below

Everyone remembers the commercial Google aired on the Superbowl. Well to continue the success of that campaign Google released a fun new tool called Search Story Tool.  Not only is this a great piece of marketing but also teaches us a few things along the way.

Let’s break it down to see why this is such a great viral marketing campaign.

They kept the process simple… 3 steps is all

You write a little story add some music and the upload it after you check it out. Keeping the process clearly defined and easy to follow is a prerequisite for any viral marketing campaign. The harder it is the less likely it will take off.

Give Creativity to the end user

Everyone likes to tell their friends about something they made or created even if they had a little help. If you give a way for your end user to do a little bit of customization it will pay  dividends in the long run. Get creative and let your end user show their stuff.

Make it easy to share

If a campaign is going to go viral it needs a way to easily spread. Leveraging the end user’s social media connection is the fastest and easiest way to do just that. You don’t have to go crazy and give them every option under the sun but the top 2-3 will do just fine.

On a side note….

If Google didn’t test using Google Buzz as one of the viral tools…shame on them

Also don’t over look the ease of sending a link or embedding the media on a blog or website. It’s a great way to get your end user to spread the word even more. Nothing says Viral like being linked on millions of blogs and websites.

So to recap…

When creating a viral marketing campaign remember to:

1. Keep the Process Simple
2. Give Creativity to the End User
3. Make It Easy to Share

Don’t be shy let my know what you think and make a comment below