You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Social Media' category.
I was lucky enough to be up in Seattle yesterday to sit in on the sessions at SMX Advanced. SMX stands for Search Marketing Expo and SMX Advanced is one in a series of a half dozen conferences run around the world each year. Each of these conferences is dedicated to Search Marketing.
My favorite session of the morning was “Twitter Tactics and Search Marketing”. There were several presenters, including Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service and Joanna Lord, Co-Founder & CMO, TheOnlineBeat.
Michael was my favorite presenter of the show. His presentation was fast paced and insightful – very difficult to put into words. He started his presentation with “There is no right or wrong way to use Twitter. You need to determine what works for you”, which set a very down-to-Earth tone. Michael listed off what seemed like a thousand tools and tactics for twitter, but my favorite soundbite of his presentation is that “the re-tweet is Twitter gold“. He suggested that you RT (re-tweet) the most self-serving tweets of people you want to notice you.
Although Michael was a hard act to follow, Joanna definitely held her own. She offered great advice with regards to Twitter use and security. She suggested the following:
- RESEARCH an application/tool BEFORE giving them your PASSWORD
- Read.The.Link.Before.You.Push!!! (reference to the use of URL shorteners and re-tweeting links)
My favorite afternoon session talked about Search Engine Rank Factors (SERFs) in 2009 and had heavyweight presenters Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, Laura Lippay, Dir. Technical Marketing at Yahoo, and Marty Weintraub, President of aimClear. What I took away from the session was that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more than meta tags, inbound links, keyword density, etc. It is about being viral, creating buzz, and creating a great product. Laura suggested asking yourself “What is it going to take to outrank our top competitor?” Simple, yet profound. I don’t think many people ask themselves this question. I think fewer people are disciplined enough to follow through with the actions needed to become #1.
Besides the great educational sessions, there was an excellent vendor in conjunction with the conference. All the large players were there such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and SEOmoz. Microsoft had the most interesting booth promoting their new “Bing” search engine. I particularly liked that you could use an XBox 360 controller to control maps provided by Bing. The best swag was provided by SEOmoz, who gave away cans of “Link Juice”. The LinkJuice reminded me of the case of Brawndo that I bought off the Internet before Christmas (a reference to the movie Idiocracy, if you haven’t seen it).
Unfortunately, I had to leave the conference before the evening keynote on Day 1 due to client commitments. It looked like there were some great Day 2 sessions as well as vendor sponsored parties. I am definitely going to keep Search Marketing Expo events on my radar over the coming year.
If you didn’t catch all the fun and excitement at INTEROP Las Vegas, May 17-21… well… you missed it!
Don’t fret just yet – Xirrus is giving you a second chance to experience all the fun! If you have been following my blog, you probably know that Xirrus ran a “Melee at the Mandalay” campaign with Live Men’s and Women’s Boxing. We recorded many of the matches and uploaded them to YouTube.
Additionally, we have uploaded tons of videos (boxing, product demos, interviews, etc.), pictures, and a whole lot more to a blog located at http://interop09.wordpress.com
Normally what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Not this time! We documented all the buffoonery, to include Miss Nevada 2009 knocking out our product manager, Brian Mason (see below). Check out the blog to see what else happened!
Related Posts:
While at INTEROP last week, I met several journalists, analysts, etc. Several of them visited WiFiJedi.com and gave me feedback.
One piece of constructive criticism was that while the content was good, there was no real good way to find past material. This individual suggested that I have a tag cloud widget on my blog cross-referencing posts on a given topic.
Therefore, I have taken this suggestion and placed a tag cloud on the side bar of my blog. I have always had the drop down category box and the search field that appear below the tag cloud. At the bottom of every post, I have also tried to link to other applicable WiFiJedi.com material. Have you used these features? Do you like the tag cloud? Please let me know what you think in the comments section.
At any rate, the tag cloud coversation reminded me of one of the sessions I attended at INTEROP titled “Next Generation Search: Social Bookmarking and Tagging” by Thomas Vander Wal. Here is an oversimplified graphic from the presentation:
Interest –> Culture
Vocabulary –> Terminology
Mr. Vander Wal suggested that bookmarking and tagging turn individual interest into a shared culture and how they also turn an individual vocabulary into shared terminology.
Coincidently enough, that same day I found a Twitter service called Twittersheep that generates a tag cloud of all the terms used in the biographies of your followers. Here is what it generated from my followers:
What really jumped out at me was how much of a reflection of my background and interests are mirrored by my Twitter followers. I guess we are attracted to people who persue similar activities. Go ahead and try it and let me know if you come to a similar conclusion!
Related Posts:
This should be considered the “how-to Twitter bible” for beginners and experts alike. For beginners, the book talks about how to use the technology for many different purposes including advertising, selling, customer service, etc.
For advanced users, the book discusses third-party tools, Twitter application development, and legal concerns.
Personally, the section I enjoyed the most was how to use Twitter to build and maintain a personal brand.
Joel writes in a very friendly, informal way which puts the reader at ease and enables them to digest the material at a rapid pace. Don’t let that fool you though – there are plenty of examples, case studies, and hyperlinks throughout the book.
The book ends with a 30 day action plan for how to get maximum value from using Twitter. It has specific steps to accomplish each day.
Purchasing the book also includes a free “ticket” to Joel’s online 4-week social media workshop. I found out about this feature watching Joel’s video preview of the book on Amazon. It was one of the deciding factors to purchase this versus another Twitter title. However, when the book arrived, I got so caught up in reading it, I haven’t registered for the online workshop yet. I guess that is the ultimate testimonial for how engrossing the book is…
Related Posts:
Are you one of the thousands of people who already read, “What every IT professional needs to know about 802.11n”? If so, thanks for reading!
Please feel free to comment, either here at WiFiJedi.com or on the actual Computerworld post.
I also recently found out that someone submitted the story to Reddit.com (thank you to “Geek” for picking up the story).
I have to admit that I am still learning about the social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. However, I always appreciate the additional exposure, so please consider adding any of my stories that you think are worthy. I also love the comments that come back from getting listed on a social bookmark system. They help me focus on what’s most helpful for you, the reader.
Stay tuned to my Computerworld blog (http://blogs.computerworld.com) for Part 2 of this series, in which I will discuss some of the main deployment considerations for 802.11n WLANs. NOTE: I am attending INTEROP this week, so it probably won’t appear until sometime next week.
As many of you know, I have started an account on Twitter under the user name “wifijedi”.
No, I wasn’t influenced to join by Oprah, or the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN competition.
I see it mostly as a micro-blogging tool and enjoy sending out shorter, yet more frequent updates.
Recently, my Twitter profile page got a makeover. Thanks to friend and co-worker John Merrill, I now have a customized background.
My background serves as a central repository for WiFi Jedi branded content including my blog, my Computerworld blog, my LinkedIn profile, and my lens on Squidoo.
You can check out my new background at http://www.twitter.com/wifijedi
I originally wrote this piece as a guest post for An Information Security Place. However, I wanted to re-post at WiFiJedi.com FRIDAY 4/17 Update: Apparently the behavior described below is tied to a buggy Pidgin plugin. I haven’t been able to confirm that 100%, but thought I should deliver the latest & greatest…
—————————————————————————————–
As most of you know, Twitter was hit with a series of worms this past weekend. They were created by 17 year old, Mikey Mooney, creator of the website StalkDaily.com (don’t visit the site). The original worm seemed fairly innocuous, with messages that were created to drive traffic to the StalkDaily website.
I wrote a Computerworld blog post, where I detailed the original attack as well as provided a list of security recommendations. In that post, I commented that Twitter users should be on the lookout for modified worms, especially as additional details of the original attack come to light.
After Twitter patched the original cross site scripting (XSS) flaw, which exploited the “link” field in a user profile, another variant of the worm appeared. This time, the worm exploited the “color” setting of the user profile. Modifying the worm highlighted that the XSS vulnerability was not limited to a single field and that Twitter would have to institute a comprehensive patch, not a band-aid solution.
The variant of the worm automatically generated tweets with the term “mikeyy”. These were sarcasitic in nature and seemed to be tounge-in-cheek. Examples include:
- Mikeyy I am done…
- Mikeyy is done…
- Twitter please fix this, regards Mikeyy
The general consensus today is that the “StalkDaily” and “Mikeyy” worms have been adequately addressed. However, I am not fully convinced. Four days after the original worm, I am still seeing suspicious behavior. A colleague of mine has a Twitter account that automatically started generating tweets saying “I am not here right now.”
Using a third party iPhone application, TweetStack, I am conducting periodic searches on the string “I am not here right now.” I found that this is not nearly as wide spread as the “StalkDaily” Twitter worm, but has affected at least a couple dozen accounts.
While this could be yet another variant of worm created by Mikey Mooney, my suspicion is that this is a copycat worm created by another party (most likely a Scriptkiddie).
Are YOU still seeing anomalous behavior on Twitter? I would love to hear about it! Please comment below as well as notify the Internet Storm Center if you see anything noteworthy.
I would like to offer periodic book reviews on WiFiJedi.com The plan is to review wireless networking and security books. However, I have been doing a lot of reading about blogging and social media these days. Therefore, this week I am reviewing the book “Groundswell” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.
Please let me know in the comments section if you like the idea of book reviews. Also let me know if you would like them strictly on wireless, or if you don’t mind if they are off topic.
I originally bought this book based on a You Tube video of the author, Charlene Li, making a presentation under the “Authors @Google” program. I guess the Groundswell sold one more copy of her book…
In many ways, this book reminded me of Jim Collin’s “Good to Great” book. “Groundswell” is very quantitative in nature. There are a TON of in-depth case studies – the book even contains a case index in addition to a subject index.
The book is well structured. It is broken into three main parts and has a logical idea flow of listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing the groundswell. While I liked the structure, it took more time to read than most books due to its academic nature.
Overall, the authors take a practical, high-level approach to social media. They focus on the people, objectives, and strategy BEFORE they focus on any given technology.
This should definitely be a cornerstone text in any library on Social Media!
![[LinkedIn]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3477/3463037125_247575d1f3_m.jpg)
![[LinkedIn]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3598/3463037145_924738ec38_m.jpg)
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
