Owning Your Content In Search: Google Now Makes It Easier To Link Your Website To G+

June 13, 2012 Leave a comment

Reblogged from TechCrunch:

Last year, Google announced an initiative to give authors on the Web greater ownership over their content and more visibility in search. Google Authorship, as its known, has changed consistently since launch, as the company experiments with the best ways to authenticate authors and give them proper attribution.

Unfortunately, up to this point, the authentication process has been fairly convoluted. …

Read more… 525 more words

Own your content in a search by adding and linking your website to your Google+ page. I just did it. You can see the link in the right hand column. This will supposedly help your site in Google searches. Lots of linking going on and some how it will help your website out. This linking feature also makes you eligible for Google+ Direct Connect, which means you can search Google for this page as +WavesandTidings and the Google+ page will appear, if only I am so lucky to get Google's blessing.
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Revenge of the Ping

June 6, 2012 Leave a comment

Reblogged from cheerful.egg:

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I'll make this quick - today, I planned for a totally productive night of getting shit done. I was gonna review my budget, research some investments, blog a little bit, and organize my articles. Yeah, I can tell that you're totally jealous of my ridiculously awesome life of sex, drugs and alcohol.

But it all started going downhill from work - First, I was given a big task to do in the morning.

Read more… 638 more words

This is one of the most truly honest blogs describing the anguish those of is information junkies go through when trying to accomplish simple daily tasks. All too often we are overcome by those information pouring sites like Twitter, Facebook, so many blogs, YouTube; also known as the 'weapons of mass distraction'.

Filed under Life & Culture, Opinion, Technology, Web Tagged with , , , , , ,

Keywords: Why and Where You Should Be Using Them

June 6, 2012 Leave a comment

Keywords, the greatest tool you can ever have and understand how to use.  Search engines are based on keywords.  When you type into a search engine that you want to look up famous quotes about life by Albert Einstein, the search engine is trying to return results that best match your request.  It will find anything that is about Albert Einstein and mentions quotes and life.  It is quite simple, except when your search results return hundreds of results.  So where can you use keywords?

Finding Things Online

As mentioned, you can use them in a search engine to find things online.  If you are at your favorite blog or online store, you can usually enter keywords to find what you are looking for.  If you want a book by a particular author on Amazon.com, you can enter the authors name and a drop down appears that says the authors name and topics they are available in.  You would select books.  On Google, searching for Albert Einstein quotes returns several sites with quotes from the famous physicist.

Job Hunting

When you post your resume online at Monster or CareerBuilder you are making that resume available to their search engines.  Employers access these search engines and input keywords related to the position they are trying to fill.  The good news is you can access their search engines as well to search for those open positions. Using the right keywords helps you to be found, and for you to search for the right positions.

The best advice to offer when writing your resume is to avoid writing what you think should be said and what you think the keywords are.  You should search for jobs you might like and to incorporate into your resume the keywords you find in their search results.  Let’s say you find a technical writer position listed and it states that the company wants someone familiar with the APA style, has good proofreading skills, understands medical and technical terminology, are organized, and a self-starter.  You will want to make sure, as long as you have that set of skills and experience, that you use those same keywords common in the search results in your resume.  I also recommend you search for a few similar positions and see which words pop up the most.

Web Publishing and Building an Online Presence

If you are posting a blog and want to be found in the search results under certain topics, you tag your blog with relevant keywords.  An easy example is posting to Twitter.  They show their latest trending topics.  To show up at the top of search results on those topics you will find users posting a link to their material loaded with those trending keywords.

While that is annoying, it does get you to show up in results.  Results are where you want to be.  Proper tagging in your blogs (WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger), pins (Pinterest), tweats (Twitter), and on a main business site gets you to show up in relevant search engines.  Do the research to find out what the relevant and most popular keywords are and you will get more noticed.

Filed under Business, Career, Definitions, Personal Development, Technology, Web Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

What We Can Learn From Justin Bieber

June 5, 2012 Leave a comment

From a young age Justin Beiber understood the importance of social media from when his mom first started posting his videos on YouTube.  In fact, it was those YouTube videos of him singing and playing his guitar that caught the attention of every screaming 15 year old girl, Ryan Seacrest, Ellen DeGeneres, David Letterman, and the nine figure mis-click made by his manager Scott Braun.  One of those 15 year old girls was Selena Gomez, whom he can claim as his attractive and equally famous girlfriend.

Justin is now at an age where he must do more for himself.  But when you think about it, he always has promoted himself.  Justin, at a young age knew what most of us didn’t.  Social media is the new wave of self-promotion.  These 15 year old girls are now mostly legal adults and avid users of social media, leading the base of his online fan base.  This generation knows how to use more than Facebook.  They can use text messages, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and other social media channels to share their love for Justin Beiber.

So what are his stats?  Justin’s Twitter account has almost 23 million followers.  His Facebook page has almost 44 million ‘Likes’ and listed as having almost 700 thousand talking about him.  He has a MySpcae page with over 2 million friends and 110 million plays.  His YouTube channel has almost 125,000 subscribers and over 6 million views, but he has a second YouTube channel with Vevo that has almost 1.5 million subscribers and over an astonishing 2.5 billion views.  That is almost half of the world’s population of each view was unique!  Oh and he also has sold over 15 million records.

So what has he done with all of these riches?  He has invested.  Not in common stocks like Microsoft, Pepsi and Apple, but into tech startups.  Forbes wrote a recent article confirming four of them as messaging platform Tinychat, social curation app Stamped, gaming outfit Sojo Studios and, the fast growing and most critically acclaimed of his profile, Spotify.  Spotify itself is quickly changing the music landscape, providing the ability to listen to watch you want to, provided you either pay a service fee or listen to a few ads.  He also plans to invest in Viddy, a video-sharing app.

Without technology, Web 2.0, and the growth of social media, Justin Beiber would not exist this big in the public eye.  Social media gave birth to the phenomenon of Justin Beiber.  He uses YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and was an early adapter of Instagram.  He says a big difference between him and Lady Gaga is “She didn’t have online fans before she had mainstream fans”.

Another strong note about Justin is his skill at networking.  He boasts as friends the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Sean Kingston, Ryan Seacrest, Ashton Kutcher, and David Letterman.

With his social media savvy, his growth as a venture capitalist, and his hard work in music, Justin should be around for a long time and not become a phased out, burnt out teenie bopper.  He is working to mature his music for adulthood and take a dip into acting in movies.  He hopes to be known for the assets he buys into just as much as the songs he sings.

So what can we learn from Justin’s young career?

  • Listen to your momma
  • Work hard
  • Start promoting early
  • Build and maintain those early relationships
  • Social media works to promote your brand
  • Learn the latest technology trends
  • Use the latest and greatest social media sites
  • Create a plan and goals
  • Network like a champ with like-minded individuals
  • Have an inner circle you can trust
  • Be smart with your money
  • Don’t be afraid to take some risks
  • Try new things
  • Invest only in what you like
  • Remember you are nothing without your followers (fans)

References

http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2012/05/16/justin-bieber-venture-capitalist-the-forbes-cover-story/3/

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Justin_Bieber_on_any_social_networking_sites

Filed under Business, Career, Entertainment, Management, Mobile, Music, Personal Development, Technology, Web Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Basics to Starting a Social Media Presence

May 29, 2012 1 Comment

Long gone are the days of Yellow Page ads, junk mailers, paper business cards, and other traditional ways of marketing yourself.  It seems inevitable these days, that if you have a business, you’re a writer, involved in sports or entertainments, or just trying to market yourself, you need to create some sort of social media presence.  If you don’t have a clue, the following should provide you with a good general list of places to start if you want to get started making that presence, and promote your web site or services.

Facebook

Most everyone should know of Facebook by now.  The great features they have for an individual or organization is the ability to create groups, pages and events.  You could create a page for your business, create a group for focus discussions, and add events for special promos.  You can add apps to the page to incorporate other social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.  Additionally, the time line allows you to add in special dates of your company’s history, and to set up photo albums.  As the world’s largest social media site it is an almost must you create a presence here to interact with users.

Twitter

The supreme leader of all things microblogging.  Twitter is awesome to catch the latest news the quickest.  You can follow, or easily find users related to your own industry, and instantly begin posting your content (140 words or less) and networking with others.  If you find articles of interest you can easily share them to Twitter.  If you are attending a live event and want to share what’s happening, you can post quick responses, including adding pictures.  Twitter also has apps at many other sites that allow a single post to spread to other sites, or many sites to post a link to your Twitter account.

LinkedIn

The social networking platform for professionals.  LinkedIn cuts out the informal social media statuses and provides a social platform to interact and network with like-minded professionals.  You may find current and former colleagues, prospective jobs, but for your business you could find new clients and potential businesses to partner with.  Groups can be created to discuss your products and to send updates.  You can add apps as well to interact with Twitter and your blogging sites.

YouTube

This is the standard for broadcasting video over the Internet.  You can create a channel on YouTube and upload your marketing or tutorial videos.  You can then share them on most other social media sites, or grab a link to embed into your website.

Pinterest

Don’t let the stigma that this is a woman’s site turn you away.  It hasn’t for many millions of users.  You can easily post pictures of your products and separate them by themes or categories.  Users can easily repin those pictures to their boards, creating a link to your page, providing free marketing for your organization.WordPressThis is a great blogging site, especially for writers and photojournalists.  You can create your site to function as your home page, with the ability to create multiple pages, or use it as a blog.  It is easy to manage and schedule all of your postings and to set up tools for sharing to other social sites.  I find this site best for longer articles, photo exhibits, or information blogs, such as this posting.

Tumblr

This site provides more space than Twitter, but is much easier to post small content than WordPress.  You can include basic text, videos, pictures, audio, and it formats for quotes.  You can create multiple blog pages easily under a single userID and easily link to Twitter and Facebook.  This can be a simple site for tour blogs for bands or quick daily journal entries of what is happening with your business.
Google +

Though it does not possess the popularity of Facebook, Google + easily integrates with all of Googles products, such as Gmail and GChat.  It is easy to assign users to Friends or Family circles, or to place pages as Followers.  Integration is its best feature to reach users.  It may be a better tool to interact creatively with colleagues as a form of Intranet, rather than trying to reach new customers.

MySpace

The old dog of social media sites.  It has been down but not forgotten, and has shown signs of rising from the ashes.  MySpace is still great for ‘social entertainment’, such as bands, comedians, artists, movies, club events, DJ’s, and other creative services.  There are many audio specific sites popping up that interact well with other sites, but MySpace combines the audio and social experience all in a single location.

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