I'm loyal, so Where's my dinner!

Loyalty… a precious thing in many respects and not something to be abused, so it’s surprising how many people do abuse loyalty, some may not even realise they are doing it … online it is very apparent with Internet marketers, some bloggers even, taking liberties with their readers, customers and potential fans, fans?

… You know, people who spread your value, freely.

Why they do it, I have no idea, nor do I care that much, as long as you, me, those I respect don’t do it… all’s well, the more the greedy idiotic ones screw up, the sooner they fail bad the sooner it stops being so much that way.

We can all do our bit…

It’s the one reason I got OFF all the marketers list (newsletters! – more like my buddies have some crap to sell spam) and these supposedly good marketers say I shouldn’t do this, preaching that we need to “stay on the ball” within the niche… to that I say bollox… all it does is jade you and influence you with the negative vibe around it… don’t bother.

They give nothing of value that will make you loyal to them.

Although some really do give value.

Same as reading feeds in your feed reader… are they all really giving value? If not … why bother with them?

We should all prune and prune diligently, everything.

With anything, twitter followers, RSS subs, friends on social sites, etc, anything online… before doing more, can you improve what you already have?

By pruning and cleaning up things you can certainly make it better for you… and it’s you that has to use it, put up with it, good and bad.

For me, I am picky everywhere if I can help it, though I have neglected to keep on the ball with everything I think that’s a case of spreading oneself to thin… easy done but if you don’t try things how will you know if they are worth using?

Don’t be surprised if a profile of mine drops off a social site, it may happen… the main thing for me is, does what i get out in value equal the effort out in to get it?

For some places, understandable as places change, it’s getting to be a big no… twitter is one site I use less than I did, but I still use it, just not the way I once did because of  a few factors, yes, I have had good connections and conversations there but sure as hell can’t find them anymore… it has no legs set up that way for me.

There has been a few interesting changes which make all this the more important, people are losing things and in some cases just abandoning services – one thing is this blog is mine, it isn’t going to be closed, like any of these social sites could do, anytime and that means I should value what I do with this over anything else.

Same as everyone else really, do more on what you actually own and use your time wisely on what works elsewhere, dump the rest.

Agreed?

Updated!

Bloggerluv, it’s a great little place and you don’t have to have a blog to use it, to join in, so why not do that?  Why not indeed…

I have written about bloggerluv before, but it has since moved and is now so much better, faster than the old set up.

It sucks….

Why use it then? Don’t bother!!!

Because it’s yours, it’s built for you, not the owner, that’s the difference between alot of places and this one, it’s a dofollow place too, so you get some benefit from links, you will see some nice things posted there, some inspiring, some useful, some entertaining, something for all…

Because there are some great people there, who are helpful, they help share your content, if you have some, if not, they just engage with you.

Because it will grow and you will benefit from that, being an early user will be a big bonus in the long run.

Because it helps build your backlinks, reach and you get ideas for more to do.

Because, just because…

Now what you waiting for?

Get on over to bloggerluv and try it out. Seriously, don’t bother…

Facebook – love it or hate it, it’s not going anywhere… recently I’ve seen changes there which, it looks like their smart ex google and friendfeed teams ideas have been implemented, pop ups on hovering over names, better layout on the notifications, more use of our avatars, liking individual comments, among a few other updates they’ve added.

It’s changing and most likely still growing.

Is it all good or bad, for who?

Well…

I have come close to closing it a few times!

Constant improvements help to fend that off.

Facebook’s home sweet home

Facebook’s home page is the most important one, for them and us, for us, it’s the one we should want to spend the time on, seeing everything in one neat stream means we spend less time clicking out, meaning more time doing something, IE adding to facebook.

It’s also where they can spend most of their time building more “usefulness” and having one main stream page to concentrate on is going to mean improvements can be tested quicker and implemented often, small changes would be tracked easily, if good, go, if not, drop it, over a year you would see alot more change.

If they had to keep altering and updating every page and whatnot, it would be less worthy, all efforts on one streamed page is better.

Facebook have the right team (created gmail and freindfeed) to make that platform and home page work and work well.

Facebook is a platform, nothing more, nothing less, a platform for “user generated content” … that is, YOU create the content which gives the place it’s value, without you, facebook is nothing, hence they will never charge anyone, to much to lose!

They are simply making it easier and better for you to do just that, create more value for them, and freely, easily.

Which is why…

Facebook has improved it’s home page alot, think back to two years ago if you used it then, so many clicks had to be made to find anything, all the stupid notifications, having to click through to profiles, endless… and now, you can do almost everything from the home page, don’t hear any moaning now, I would love facebook to switch a few 1000 of those who moaned back to the old crappy one for a week!!

That would stop future petty moaning!

Facebook’s still a closed garden

Yes, as we know, most of us have it set to private for real friends and family, understandable really when you consider that’s why they joined, most people don’t have other profiles on other social sites, just using facebook itself… which is why most were angered when the owners tried to underhandedly make privacy changes.

Their issue is they want more of it open, they want it all searchable on main search engines like Google too, the people don’t, most of them, so they kept their settings private.

Will this change? No idea… depends on them, you, Google too.

Facebook’s reaching out in different ways

Which is one reason I added the “like” button as you see below each post here, I have mixed feelings about it though, not all straightforward either!

See, the fact my profile is closed on facebook, like many of yours, means Google and search engines don’t pick up links and such from them, unless it’s set to “everyone” they won’t.

This leaves a dilemma for many in that we need to know how to spread what we do within a closed facebook if we can’t get it to do so outside facebook, therefore facebook is using other methods like the “like” and “share” buttons you see, this allows the search engines to know something about it, by being on sites and blogs themselves.

You click the Like button below, thankfully you don’t leave this blog (else it wouldn’t be there!) and the link with the title goes to your facebook profile saying you liked it, you are helping me too. Try it…

This also allows us bloggers to get a link and potential eyeballs on closed profile sites, without you doing anything but click… like!

But it also allows us a little something else, personal recommendation, from a friend… a more powerful promotion you couldn’t get!

Another is the way in which facebook allows us to also choose the setting on the share links when we share anything on facebook, often I will choose “everyone” when sharing a post from here, or other, and this should show to everyone… and the search engines.

Bonus!

So, what do you think of of facebook lately?

Doing my bit, are you doing yours?   – - – - ¬

Just a quick post, though an important one with lessons for us all!

Be a man!

It seems some people can never make that step to admitting they are being an asshole and they can’t say that word “sorry”, more so to the right person on the right bloody blog.  You know, if you are gonna do anything then make it the right thing and not half assed.

If you are a “big” person, in his words, don’t blame social media and it’s users for your crappy lame product being slammed, it got slammed cos it’s crap, sod all to do with you being the “big” man there to be shot down.

Making threats is just lame!

Amazing that people can be so dumb and not see the damage they do to their own reputation!

Takes a bigger person to admit they are being an asshole!

Better yet, don’t be an asshole!

Portland's chesil beach...

One in a million, literally!

If you are this blogging / website game then you are one among millions ~ like pebbles on a beach ~ millions of whom also with the same aim as you, to get somewhere and make it work, make money, grow your reach and readership, get noticed in other ways (book deals spring to mind!) so no matter what it is you aim for, it’s your platform, the springboard and nothing more.

But like the pebbles on the beach we are all connected, it only takes one person to make the difference, depending on who it is.

Not easy all this and it’s only going to get harder…although with some luck the search engines will weed out the crap better as we go along and faster too, yet they are never going to be as smart as you, the person and that matters, it can help I think if we think about it and use that knowledge right.

People, not machines!

This I think is why social traffic can’t really be ignored, whatever happens with social traffic has to be noticed by the SE’s. Granted SE traffic is key to it all but they feed off each other, one can’t exist without the other anymore.

Look at the latest traffic growth curve of facebook compared to google…

No matter how you look at it, it’s the people and not machines that count.

Therefore it pays to write for people first, machines second.

It’s good to rank for keywords machines look out for when it comes to getting your site to make money online yet it’s still the people who pay you, not the machine, the machine only helps drive more people to you.

Traffic is not key, what you get that traffic doing is key!

If you are selling crap, increasing your conversion means the traffic can stay the same and your profits go up, that is what you should be always working on, then any traffic increase you do create means bigger profits, like create more articles and include an anchored backlink in each, a few of these mean more traffic and better ranking, leading to even more traffic too.

Win bloody win!

Numbers, yep it is a numbers game, anyone who says different is doing a disservice for saying so.

The only numbers that matter are your own, yeah by all means listen to what others may say which you could learn from but don’t take them for gospel, test it yourself and see what it does to your numbers, then take that as gospel.

No-one else knows what your numbers are, what you can improve, drop, whatever, only you regardless of what ebooks, blogs, websites tell you, the only real way to know is to test it for yourself.

It doesn’t mean do all yourself as you are unlikely to be able to do it all, do what matters for you, not blindly do everything you read or hear, we know where that can lead…

Road to nowhere!

Lonely road that is!

Social traffic doesn’t have to mean YOU being social

It’s all good and well being on twitter, facebook etc and being sucked in socially but that also takes up your time and also it’s not likely you have enough influence to make it really worth that time spent.

If social traffic is to really pay, in whatever form, it needs to be spread by the right people, the influencers in whatever niche you target, you need those who do have the reach, one of the things to consider is to some how some way capitalise on that, maybe give them something worth sharing, whether it’s amazing free content as such on your blog, a free product they can do something with, or even make them a decent offer of some sort.

The point is make it so there is something in it for them, and those they share it with.

The more this gets shared the better the SE’s will take note, they can’t ignore the social influence can they?

Indeed, there is a reason google has started personalising search and included social your social graph into that.

Use what social traffic can teach you in order to improve your SE traffic, think about it this way, what words people react to are going to be something different to what machines do, naunces of language are not something machines deal with quite like you do.

Find the new keywords and unusual terms people give you.

You could find some interesting long tail keywords utilising this info, long tail keywords are simply longer search terms, IE instead of typing in “cakes” they may type in “old English cakes” which narrows the search to a more specific target and it’s what they actually want to see the results for, so, that is a basic example but hopefully understandable?

As we know from google own words, most searches are new search terms, which means you know when any long tail keyword with be a hit.

Build some half decent content utilising these long tail keywords, and with that some anchored backlinks with these long tail keywords too. (see how these links I am sharing are anchored backlinks?)

This will help your ranking in the SE’s eh?

By now you should know they feed each other in many ways and if possible should be utilised in whatever form benefits you.

You may find its useless, maybe it is, but how will you know unless you test it?

Granted if you just have an adsense site it may hurt you in some ways, lowering your ad value for one, the click through (CTR) rate for another.

Do what works for you and only that.

That is the bottom line, as long as it’s ethical, legal, do whatever works well for you and test anything and everything you think may work, don’t let others say or tell you what will, will not work, only you can know by doing.

Some ideas to think about.

Please share this, and / or thoughts in comments…

Gone through a few changes recently but one I have yet to explain is that as I aim to make money online I also know I need to “monetise” this blog even if only to pay for itself but it is as a part of the bigger picture, for the start I have added adsense to the sidebar.

I am also going to be “trimming the fat” so to speak, cutting out all the crappy stuff I really don’t need or want.

I do want results, that has to be the bottom line, if it means a few changes here, so be it.

Having no got settled into WP I constantly find new things that I see blogger mmiss out on so much, or at least some of things you can do with blogger are not highlighted like in WP, you can spot some of them lol

It’s growing on me fast! …

There are some great bloggers out there using WPress, I see their blogs with a different eye than before…

John Sullivan's cool dog!

There is good reason to do things with mutual respect, we all know we need others to help, as we also help others, people need people, it can’t all be one sided… it won’t work at it’s best.

It’s all a two way street, you know as well as I know that’s a truth, we have to be right too…

Else there’s…

For any of us!

It’s not all cosy though and everyone has to be aware of the rouge element among us…

That is, there are some people we encounter online which normally annoy us all, the spammers and scammers, snake oil salesmen, selfish marketers only in it for the buck at any cost

Really there is only one possible messge to them at any point you enconter them…

Piss off spammers!

The one good thing coming from social media is the fact these people have nowhere to hide, reputation should mean more now than it did two, three, four years ago… those who did bad a few years ago could even find shit they did dug back up again, it would be easy to happen.

Though the one thing we see now, which if you think about it, is not only lame but also in some ways it’s likely to be these people who will get crap in a few years when it’s all ridiculed.. that is, the “social media experts!”

If you have that on your twitter profile or similar, then yes, I’m talking about you, and I am not the only one either. You are no expert cos you’ve been on twitter five mins!

Get back to basics…

Therein lies an issue I have to consider, social media traffic, and the need to make money online, they don’t seem to go together yet they will have to.

I like this social aspect of the interwebs, it’s good for alot of reasons but it does take up time, it’s time that’s also a bit harder to measure in results, a bit different to Search engine traffic, enough for it to matter.

So, while I think twitter and other places have their uses, I am not convinced it’s the right option with pure make money sites, adsense, affilates, things of that kind, yet isn’t it just getting harder to rely soley on SE traffic?

The SE traffic and social traffic is getting harder to separate, one can’t be without the other it seems to me.

Will it get worse? Will it get to the point you really can’t ignore social traffic at all?

What do you think?

Oh, a new tool toy social network stream, from google too… not one to get my hopes up with the let down after the hype of wave.

Let’s see what all this buzz is about, why are people buzzing about it?

Being touted as the facebook beater, even by google, if their adword ads are anything to go by… some say it’s like twitter with more to it, and slightly less than facebook without the app crap, has some attributes harking back to friendfeed.

Sounds good… so far.

Plenty has been written about it too, from various angles, geeks and photographers, social network die-hards and the average user.

Some bad stuff was spreading about privacy issues… facebook did the same crap but, with facebook… did they gain a bigger “public” user-base for it…you bet, just as google did, tried, intentionally or not.

They ain’t daft, neither of them… gotta give them that, sly maybe.

So, having looked at it and have a little play with it, but not really in depth as such, I can see good potential there, also though I felt it is getting some unwarranted hype… hype just ruins stuff in some ways, we could say the fact google kept it quiet till it went out means they learnt some lessons with wave, avoiding it was probably a good idea, the irony, buzz released without buzz, which gained overnight buzz.

The fact it’s in gmail is a good thing, as been said elsewhere a few things need sorting out, no doubt they will be looked at too considering that google are listening to users.

After all they cleared a little of the sharing mess with the google reader contacts etc at the start.

One thing is I’d like see google allow us to cloak our email addresses on our profile pages with our chosen name as seen in buzz… that would be nice, I think these google profiles will become an important and decent central hub for us all who use googles products, it also mirrors facebooks use of real names should we choose them, the current choice of numbers or email is not good, we didn’t have the choice to use anything other than our email at the time if I remember right, number or email.

With the cloaking of email address on the profiles we would feel better, and it makes sense considering all these contacts could be stored in gmail, cloaked, it would be good to have list in there and have email permissions, non permission choices with list, or individuals…so only those you choose ever get to see your email address, and vice versa. The rest, cloaked.

Give us the control to make it the best central place we could have, as it’s a great semi private place, gmail, I say semi as it is private really but feels like you have people in there…email is used more than anything too so it makes sense to have buzz in gmail.

It makes sense to make gmail the central for everything google, mind you being able to connect with real offline friends via gmail and such is going to be a better thing for me, just getting them on gmail if they aren’t yet, I could describe buzz to those friends as facebook without walls and crap, in fact that’s another point, buzz does look similar to lite.facebook, which I already wrote about what they should have done to make that the twitter rival.

I’d like to stop filling up the sent folder with buzz though, please sort that out Google.

Also I’d like to see them allow better use with picassa, it seems like they want us to fill it all up fast so we start paying for storage… who wants to pay for duplicated pics across albums?
If you try to add one picture from an album direct to buzz it won’t, it allows you to upload the whole album?!

Odd, we already have them there… sheesh.

Emailing a picture as an attachment directly to buzz works better but then I have to download the pic again from picassa, attach, then delete the pic again… no need for that really.

Then it adds another folder called..buzz! Why?

Although picassa works nice on our profiles, and looks ok in buzz, the pics being what as they are.

Nice to be able to directly import our blogs too, can’t help think what blogger have now got up their sleeves… I’m sure Rick will be spilling ideas…oh wait – one good idea right there! (Rick will find this, meta data! I better keep an eye on you!)

That gets me more excited… I can see several subdomain ideas coming up with blogger on them!

We are the master of our domain, we should utilise it better, I should too.

Buzz… oh yeah, that…as for being any sort of twitter rival, in a sense I think it can, but I also think it’s limited… as I have a shade under 100 followers I am not getting a big respoense yet, I follow less then that as well and even then I don’t know how others can follow 1000′s… it is alot less screen-space than twitter yet twitter gets bad if you follow so many.

Of course, numbers, they matter in many ways.

Having followers is different of course, and though it’s better to have more, still there is a limit to what we can deal with.

It reminds me more of friendfeed in the sense of those who have most followers and activity seem to dominate the stream, still something they are working out, actively, so no doubt there will be ways of lessening the noise, with list or filters, make it simple.

Twitter doesn’t quite have that issue, it’s a different issue altogether. at least on that people who are drowned with followers can live in the @replies tab.
I am seriously having to sort out echoes of duplicate tweets, etc.. I think I will be keeping twitter off buzz for now, having only imported Greader shares and my blog(s) post into buzz. Twitter itself I will sort out over the next week or two…

If you are on twitter and want to follow me on buzz, I’d be happy to hear that… and hope it either adds to what we already do, or enriches one side or other, twitter, buzz.

I think facebook, twitter friendfeed have all different uses, aims, communities, so I don’t think buzz will be much different, once they start building up.

So far I like it, but it could be more, then again, there is something else, it can be a time suck, just like any of the others, or a tool to utilise, or simply another social space for community building, that is it adds to what you do if that’s what you do. (IE a photographer building a fan base)

So, the question is finding out how you will use it, where does it fit into what you do, rather than just get stuck in and play, waste time, get distracted.

For me, I am yet to realise how I will use it but I do think as a blogger user it looks like a good addition to our armoury, something we can utilise with blogger and such.

There lies something important, that
is, it’s OUR space that really matters, our blogs, sites, forums, etc, whatever it is you “own” and that is where the bulk of the efforts should go, if not then at least the direction your efforts should lead to it, that is these tools should be helping in getting them from these places to your space, if not it’s just a case of spent time… a toy!

I think it’s to early to say what buzz means for me, what I will utilise it for and how.

Is it worth looking into?

Yes, I think so, at least if only to see how you can use it to benefit you, if possible, if not, drop it.

You should sort out and format your google profile page, set the privacy settings you want, add your links and sites, blogs to it, use it as a profile.
Then in buzz set up your “connected sites” and add the ones you want, see how it fares.

Also, maybe follow me on there!

How do you find it?

…. wtf am I doing??

Then you gotta start to change things

Yeah I ask myself that at times!

A few lies here and there from others start to make me question things, well yeah I have “moaned” (in their perception) about friendfeed, facebook twitter etc over the weeks and I am not the only one to do so, the thing these liars miss is they prove the point by doing the very thing I supposedly “moaned” and “attacking” people..wtf?

Listen up you that lie about me, spread crap, I have never “attacked” anyone on these sites.. show me where I have… take your own advice and back ya shit up.. ie, man up or shut it.

Let me get this straight once and for all.

The ONE and ONLY reason I have written complaint post on here is because I CARE about it, I USE the places. I contribute, so want the experience to be as good as possible.. who doesn’t??

If I never cared, I wouldn’t say anything about it, I’d let you get on with it and say jack shit!
I care… so if I feel a point should be made which may improve the overall experience for everyone, I will make it… and I don’t expect to be attacked for it.

So.

YOU that attacked me and told lies are hypocrites, by attacking me and others in the very threads started about the post made complaining about it, not only mine, others too. THAT makes YOU the stupid one.

I like these sites but doesn’t mean I can’t also state my opinions on them on my own blog… be they good or bad, if you are looking for 100% positive fluff, look elsewhere, life simply isn’t like that.

I can’t believe the idiots and they are in the minority, and yes they are a bit of a different “mob” to the worse places, but they are still idiots. I’d rather not bother with them, but when they attack you personally with lies… you gotta say something.

If any other these post, threads whatever improve the place isn’t that a good thing?

It seems to me facebook are starting to change their ways a little, though not enough for my liking simply because of the way they continue to treat their users, the most important aspect of the whole business.

Treating your users like children is NOT the way to go.

There are now far more of the older generation on there, I would say 90% of the friends I have on facebook are 25 to 45 (my own age group), 5% under 25, 5% over 45 … just recently it’s been shown that the older generation (over 55) on facebook is also increasing, are they going to treat them like kids too?

Then again that’s no surprise whan facebook was started by a college student for college students, ie little more than kids themselves.

The growth of facebok has been pretty explosive yet they have not changed their mentality with it, well the owner is what 24, 25 … say’s alot really about why they need to “grow up” as a whole.

I have now seen dozens of people delete their accounts out of frustration and YES I debated on doing it myself, it’s something I will do if things don’t improve for the users, no-one likes to be treated like a kid and facebook is NOT the be all and end all!

It’s no secret (wrote about it on here) I’ve had issues with them like tens of thousands of others and all because of stupid rules and lack of clarification on them.

You want limits and rules to be respected, spell them out clearly!

It’s a two way street so you have to do YOUR part too facebook, that means respecting the users.

You also have to be fair on how you implement it, I can promise you this, there was a 16 or 17 year old girl in the national papers not that long ago who admitted spending ALL her waking hours on facebook with her 5000 friends, I bet she has NEVER been blocked, and yet she must have used faceboook WAY more than I have!

As a user I have the right to express an opinion on this and I only want, just like everyone else, a better experience on facebook, not have to walk on eggshells.

The stupid limits, once you have been blocked (usually without warning) and then unblocked, you should never be blocked again UNLESS the users, IE your friends, COMPLAIN about you.

Do you think facebook, that you know me better than my OWN friends?
No I thought not!
Not ONE complaint to facebook from my friends, and yet they have blocked me twice!

What part of being “social” do you not understand facebook?

I’ll spell it out, the MORE social the users are, the better!

It’s no secret facebook are losing money, THAT is the problem you should be dealing with, not pissing the users off, let the users do the job of “policing” their own experience and the friends they have, they are NOT stupid!

If some friend spams the crap out my profile with some porn or other crap, or starts insulting me or friends and getting abusive it’s, “remove from friends” and BYE BYE … pretty simple.
I don’t need YOU doing that for me.

YOU get on with what you screwed up with from the start, monetising the damn place!

Tip, ads don’t work FULL stop! (Beer icon over there)

Facebook, twitter, friendfeed, etc all social sites like these rely on you the user to be social, without the users they are nothing, so I find it a bit crazy that they limit how social you can be.

Twitter has an API limit which I have only hit twice in all the time I have used it and it usually only stops you for that hour. Although the first time it was more like two hours before I could tweet again. People can use other platforms like tweetdeck to avoid this limit, I don’t use other platforms, prefer to use the twitter site itself. Twitter should stick to the hour if they say it’s an hour.

Friendfeed may not have this “blocking” type of stupidity on their users, they want you using it as much as possible, although I have to say I am starting to see a fair bit of ignorance there nowadays, some people there will slate me for saying it but I couldn’t careless, I am not going to tell you anything but how I see it. Someone can post one word there and get tons of response, others get no response. I feel less likely to be social there if I am ignored.

It’s now just somewhere for me to find interesting stuff. I loved it at first, but I am not the only one who is getting turned off by the way people tend to ignore things, Scoble could post one word and get tons of comments, it IS a Scoble fan club.

Facebook, well they have some pathetic rules on their limits and are so vague with them too, having hit a limit last night, I know silly me, being social with my friends… sheesh how dare I be like that!

It was commenting on statuses that I hit, the very social part of the whole damn site is commenting with friends. The limit warning popped up saying it could be hours or days before it stops. How pathetic, and they treat their users terrible. They take liberties because they have so many users they feel you are IRRELEVANT and a pain.

There is no way to deal with the limit, they will not even check before blocking you, it’s a case of like it or lump it.
Even groups on facebook have been created to complain about how the users get treated.

Listen up faceache… without those users your site is NOTHING!

Why bother creating a social site and limit how social your users can be?
Dumb move, must be run by dumb people with no idea. After all we know facebook is making no money, they NEED us, should everyone dump facebook they would be in the shit then.

I think all of these social sites should start to consider the fact people will get annoyed at being treated like crap, that includes the users too!

Take the social out of them and they are just dead, empty spaces, user generated sites rely on users so don’t piss them off!

Another great reason to stick to building your own blog, site, business. In a year or two other sites will pop up and take users away from these places.

What are your thoughts?