Category Archives: Social Media

Social Media

Verifying Google Authorship

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Back in October I talked about Google authorship for the first time. If you follow that link, you’ll see an example of what it can do for you, but for those who are new to this concept, it allows for the possibility of people actually seeing your image next to a search term if it comes up during a Google search. If someone knows you it’s even better, but if not they might visit your link just because there’s a picture next to it. It can enhance your online presence greatly… isn’t that pretty cool?

What I’m finding out is that many people aren’t sure how to do it, or haven’t done it. Goodness, I knew about it, yet I figured out yesterday that I hadn’t completed it for all of my blogs; what a moron! I’d have slapped myself if I could have gotten my hands in the right position. lol

In any case, this is a quick tutorial, and the video below, with my Hot Blog Tips Hangout buddies, will talk more about it and its importance, and you can hear me giving this same advice there if you hate reading everything.

First, you have to have a Google Plus profile; without that, none of this will work. Once you have that, or if you already have that, you come back to your blog and, if you have WordPress software as your platform, you go into your User profile. I’m betting that most of you haven’t been there since you created your blogs. You’ll see what’s below, although in a totally different color:

user panel

Notice that last category saying Google+? You copy your Google profile About page link into this space. This is what G+ will be looking for when it goes to verify that it’s you. If you have multiple writers on your blog, if you enter this for each of them and they put their profile information in it’ll show them in search results as well.

After you’ve done that, go back to your Google profile and look at your About page. It looks like this:

profile01

The email address you have here has to match the email address you have on your blog associated with that blog. If you notice, since I have 5 blogs, I have 5 email addresses. What you don’t see here is the word “verify” next to each email address, since I’ve already done that. You’d click on that word and it will send an email to that address with a link in it. You’d click on that link, then come back to your profile where you’ll see this:

verified1

That’s when you know you’re good to go. It can take anywhere from a week to 3 weeks before your image finally shows up next to your content, but the first time you see it will make you happy. And, if you didn’t go back to that other post, know that during a search your image will only come upon the first post you’re found for, even if you’re showing for all the listings. I guess even Google only wants to see us just so much. 😉

There you go; easy peasy. If you want more, watch the video below; we’re always entertaining:



http://youtu.be/lzP2zFmjL68

 

Social Media

Stupid Begats Stupid; Instagram And YouTube

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I sometimes don’t understand people. At the beginning of this month I wrote a post and added a video asking the question what’s wrong with being nice. I went at that question in a different way than what I’m going to talk about today, and yet it’s as pertinent to this topic as any other.

Keep Left!
Grant the punk-ass
via Compfight

Back in December I wrote a post saying how much I loved Instagram, now that it can be accessed through Android. I still love Instagram. What I find is that I don’t necessarily like all the people there.

I love the people following me; thank you to anyone following me there. For anyone who’s not connected with me there I’m mitch9359. I love seeing your pictures and I hope you don’t get tired of looking at all the food pictures I put up.

Occasionally I like to take a quick look at an attractive lady or two; hey, I’m a guy. There’s the page that gives you 15 random photos, and occasionally I take a look. It’s amazing how many likes those pictures get… okay, I guess it’s not so amazing after all. What’s amazing are some of the comments.

I don’t know when it became a legitimate thing to decide that just because someone put a picture of themselves somewhere looking nice that you, some pig, has the right to say what you want to do to that person; you know what’s being said. Or talking about someone’s anatomy as if you know this person and thus have privileges that no one else does. How tasteless and childish can people be?

You know what stupid people? Your name gets highlighted, thus anyone can follow you back to see who you are or what images you’ve put up. I’ve gone this a few times and I have to admit that I’m amazed. It’s not all young punks writing this junk. One was obviously a devout Muslim because all the pictures on his site were Islamic religious icons, and any male was wearing the traditional headdress. So, you’re telling the world that you could care less about your religion because you can demean women anytime you want to, or are you saying that a pretty woman doesn’t matter to you because, since she’s sharing her body, she’s not chaste in your world and thus it doesn’t count?

I saw many other people who were saying the same sorts of things, and yet when you went to their page they made it seem like they were relatively nice people, putting up images that no one would ever think to object to. I really thought for a couple of moments about saying something on some of these pages, but decided I didn’t want to go there.

The same thing happens on YouTube. Stupid idiots will make comments and say all this trash and filth, yet when you visit their pages, for the most part they’re pretty straight. A few of them are as trashy and nasty on their own page, in which case you know there’s nothing much you can do about them. Well, that’s not quite true.

On YouTube, if you care, you can delete comments you don’t like. Not that I get many comments but if some came in with language I didn’t support I’d just up and delete it. On Instagram, you can’t delete comments; at least I haven’t been able to figure out how you can do it if you wanted to. It’s possible you can go online and do it, but I’m just not sure. However, if an image has more than a thousand comments, who wants to go back and read any of that garbage?

I’ve been writing a lot this month about behavior, mostly bad behavior, and maybe it’s a good thing this month is ending. I keep asking is that what we’ve become, and is this really the future of this country and the world, people deciding that no one else’s feelings or sensitivities matter? Let me know. In the meantime I’ve embedded a video from our Hot Blog Tips Hangout on the topic of negative feedback, which I led, that talks a bit more about this same thing:


 
youtu.be/0MgBHg65Kt4

 

Social Media

The Last Post Of 2012 Is About…

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Last year on December 31st I put out an article titled The Last Post Of 2011 Is About… and in that post I talked about comments and commenters and thanked them in general for commenting on this blog over the first four years. This time around I decided to figure out what the biggest topic of the year was that I wrote about, and it’s not going to be on blogging itself because, well, that’s what I already know I talk about most of the time. After some introspection and research it looks like the biggest thing to talk about is…

Flickr Meet #3 - Nottingham
Craig Marston via Compfight

Marketing and promoting on social media. I tied a lot of it in with blogging, but overall it was mainly about social media. Why was this such a big deal?

Because social media isn’t going away, never. There were some naysayers earlier in the year saying that social media was going to fail and that people should think more about traditional ways of marketing, to which I wrote this post saying that waiting for social media to fail was a stupid move. It might not look exactly like it does right now but it’s not going anywhere folks. We need to get comfortable talking about it and interacting with it.

At the same time, things are already changing. Facebook is getting in the way of what those who have liked our business pages are seeing, which led to a business comparison between Facebook and Google Plus. There’s no doubt that both of these are players, though for different reasons, and even LinkedIn will be an important piece of social media marketing with all the changes they’re started to make.

The reality is that many of the ideas that were very good just 2 years ago don’t seem to work as well now. There’s so much competition, so many options, and so little time. We also have less patience that we used to, and I’ll own up to that one. I work on 5 blogs and the top social media sites, and I also have a couple lesser known sites that I’m on, testing to see if they’ll give me anything to work with here and there and then talking about it, as I did with Social Buzz Club, which turned out to be a failure for me.

Just like most of you, I need to concentrate more on what will work for me as I move into 2013. This year was a better year for me than the last two, but not close to what I want or where I thought I’d be, both online and offline. After all, I have a dream to reach by September, and so far things are moving way too slowly in getting there.

Social media was the big conversation in 2012, and I think it will continue to be a big deal as we move into 2013. What do you think about it all? And are you ready to have a happy new year, regardless?
 

Social Media

7 Ways To Increase Your Visibility On Facebook

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About six weeks ago I wrote a post here talking about Facebook and its Edgerank algorithm that prevents a majority of your connections from seeing what you put out, whether it’s your regular profile or your business profile. I then told you how you can set things up so you can see what you want to see on Facebook with a couple of neat little steps.

My social Network on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and MyblogLog
Luc Legay via Compfight

Today I’m going to give you 7 things you can try to increase your Facebook visibility. I’ll warn you up front that some of these are time intensive, and yet I’ve found that they work in small degrees. Are you ready? Let’s begin:

1. Select 5 to 10 people you’re connected to and visit their page. I don’t mean the people you talk to all the time but some of the other people whose news you almost never see, if you see it at all. Check out the page to see if they have any activity whatsoever. If not, think about unfriending them; they obviously won’t care. If they do then find something you can like or comment on, and if you don’t see anything like that then send them a short message asking them how things are going or whatever. If they respond, you’re on your way.

2. Share a lot of the images you see in your stream from your friends. I know, you think it’s redundant, but when you realize just how little of your stuff is being seen you then realize how little stuff from others is being seen. There’s nearly a billion people on Facebook; do you really think most people will mind if they happen to see something twice? Not only that but it seems Facebook has taken care of that by grouping things that have shown up in one’s stream more than once in a day, so no worries.

3. Either “like” or comment on more of the things you see in your stream. I’ll admit that I was hesitant to do this type of thing for a couple of years. Then I realized that it’s a way of making sure you keep seeing things from people you want to see it from, especially once I learned about Edgerank. That’s how Facebook decides what you see, by determining what you liked to see previously. And if people see you more often, there’s a likelihood that they’ll like your stuff and share it as well.

4. “Like” many pages of things you like that pertain to your business or interests. I have joined a few leadership pages because that’s what I talk about mainly on my Facebook business page. I also love motivational stuff so I’ve joined a few of those pages so I can see and share what they have here and there. And of course a few things you really like which, in my case, means Star Trek and Snoopy! 🙂

5. Visit select pages that you’ve liked, go through them, and if there’s anything you see that is share worthy share it. This is the biggest thing I do, and I do it daily. I do it for three reasons. One, because it helps me find a couple more things I can share on my business page other than my own blog posts. Two, it helps give me some things to share that others might not see because they’re haven’t liked what I like. And three, it promotes other people’s stuff, which they like and thus feel a sense of obligation to share some of your stuff. It’s all about cooperation in the long run.

6. Invite people to your page. As simple as this one seems, you’d be surprised by how many people never think about doing this. Your group page offers you a chance to invite people you’re connected to without your necessarily having to publicize it in the open, although doing that every once in awhile can’t hurt either. My strategy was to selectively invite people in groups rather than everyone at once, so I did it by inviting 50 people at a time. You only get to invite them once, just so you know.

7. Ask people to share your stuff. We hate doing this, and I’ll admit that it’s rare I’ll do it. There’s nothing wrong with asking people if they’ll share something you think is pretty special but don’t abuse it. If you always ask then there’s nothing special about it and people will get tired of seeing it. I dropped a page I liked that had lots of great stuff in it because there was always this message asking you to share, and it was there when I did share, thus making it hard for me to write something over it.

I know you’re asking “how much did your traffic increase.” It’s hard to say. However, I’ve noticed that I’m seeing people on Facebook whose missives I’ve never seen before, and the number of people who have liked my Facebook page has increased. None of that depresses me at all. By the way, if you’d like to check out my Facebook page take a look at that little widget to the right and give it a little click. 😉

Meanwhile, I did a video with my Hot Blog Tips crew on the topic of alliances, which kind of pertains to this topic, and we even argue a bit over SEO:


http://youtu.be/XyJVEjPqU1c

 

Social Media

How To See What You Want To See On Facebook

42 Comments

Last week I wrote a post telling you about Facebook and its Edgerank process and how it limits what you get to see from business pages, fan pages, and even your friends. Personally I think that stinks. However, I also know a way to get around that if you really want to see whatever certain people or certain groups are saying without having to visit all of those folks or groups individually.

If you look towards the bottom of the left side of your Facebook page, you’ll see something like this. What you won’t immediately see is the “more” link, and all that takes is for you to move your mouse over there and it’ll come up. What you see here on my example is a link to my Facebook business page and two lists I specifically created.

Click on the “more” link and you will see something like this, possibly even this large:

You may have never seen this before. All those things you put in your profile that you’re not thinking about… they actually link to a page, whether there’s anything there or not. For instance, I went to high school in Limestone Maine for 2 years and I popped it into my profile, not even thinking about it. Facebook created a page for it, but if I click on the link no one else has ever joined. I can’t say that I specifically created it, but I’m stuck with it on my profile because it’s a real place.

As you’ll also notice there are some other interesting links in here that I didn’t create. There’s Close Friends and Acquaintances; you probably have those on your list page already. You can pull those up and add people to them. What’s funny is that every once in awhile, Facebook will ask you if you want to move certain people you’re connected to into Acquaintances, saying you haven’t talked to them in awhile so maybe you want to see less of what they put out in your stream. For me, close friends is the important one here, along with the other two that I actually created, which I mentioned before.

To create your own list, you see the tab there in the top right. Click on that and it gives you this:

Just name your list, then start adding people or pages you like here. You’ll have to know the names, which could end up being problematic initially because you might not remember everyone if you have lots of connections. But you can always come back to your list to add more if that’s what you want to do.

Once you do this you’re good. You never miss another post or missive from the people you put into these lists, and you can even create a list for people you really don’t want to hear from or see all that often, then hide their stuff from your stream. They’ll still be connected to you, and you can go look at them any time you want in that list, but let’s face it, some of our friends or connections post stuff we might not always want others who visit our page to see.

One last thing. Some of the lists you can delete and others you can’t. If you created it for your own purpose, you can delete it. But if it’s something that Facebook feels others might decide to join, such as my SUNY Oswego link (it already had State University; oh well…), you’re just stuck with it.

It might take you some time to set it up for perfection but once you’ve done it, you’ll never miss, or always miss, whatever you want based on how you want to see things. Cool or what?