Blog Action Day

Last year I participated in Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty.  I had such a great feeling writing that post and knowing the fact that millions of other bloggers participated on that same day in order to spread awareness for that current cause for that year.  It was the biggest Social Event of the year and I am happy to say that I will also be participating in 2009 as well.

October 15th 2009 (http://www.blogactionday.org/)

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.

Purpose of Blog Action Day

The goal is to create a world wide awareness on a different topic each year through the power of blogging.  Blogs are a great promotion, communicator and resource of information.  What better way to help promote this years topic by contributing a blog to this cause.

No Excuses.  You don’t have to donate money or even run in a marathon.  All you have to do to spread awareness is write a blog on the topic for that day.

Did I mention you get free Backlink?  By participating you blog link will be on the blog roll which will be interconnected with all the millions of other blogs out there.

Bloggers Unite – Climate Change

This years topic is climate change.  Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.

Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.

Participate now by registering your blog here http://www.blogactionday.org/en/blogs/new

Then just follow the instructions once registered.   Hope to see everyone participating.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Social Media For A Good Cause – Blog Action Day 2009 Registered – Bloggers Unite

Support For Iran Election Crisis

These past 2 weeks have been crazy with the crisis over in Iran regarding a revolting Election.  Mashable has written a great timeline of events if you need to get caught up with all the Social Media hoopla regarding the Iran Crisis here.

A movement has been recently made to show support for the protesters in regards to the Iran Crisis, the movement is wearing or showing the color green for the democracy of Iran.  Many Athletes, Celebs and Social Media sites are incorporating this movement and is rapidly growing.

Below are 2 simple ways to make your Social Media icon turn green or showcase a green ribbon.

1.)  Go to http://helpiranelection.com/ this site will overlay your Twitter picture with a green overlay or a green ribbon.  You have to supply your username and password to do so but its real simple to get it done.  However if you are uneasy in giving out your password and username on this site you may want to try the other option (The site uses OAuth like many other sites that require login information)

or..

1. Go to http://www.picnik.com

2. Upload a picture to use

3. Click ‘create’ tab

4. Click ‘effects’

5. Select ‘Night Vision’

6. Or Click “Stickers”

7. Select “Awareness Ribbons”

6. Save

I like doing the picnik option because mainly I have always been a fan of the create on the fly site and because I like the flexibility of creating the avatar effects so you can use your avatar not only on Twitter but show support in all your Social Media Exposure like Facebook or AIM.

Whichever you decide to do, please let’s show our support in this crisis and hope it all ends with a solution.

Post from: Social Media Vision

How to turn your Social Media Avatar Green in Support for #Iran

Power 150: http://adage.com/power150/

I have been awarded the Power 150 Badge and my blog is now published in the Advertising Age Power 150 Blog Rankings.

If you don’t know what the Power 150 is here is an excerpt from the site..

“The Power 150 is a ranking of the top English-language media and marketing blogs in the world, as developed by marketing executive and blogger, Todd Andrlik. It’s really as simple as that, except that the name isn’t strictly accurate: It currently ranks more than 500 blogs written about all types of media and pretty much every imaginable marketing discipline. ”

Social Media Vision is a fairly new blog and in the short time span it has been live, I already recieved great success with a PR rank 3, over 105 GFCS, High Alexa & Technorati ranking but I have been having trouble in getting in the Power 150 ranking.

The Power 150 submission is very strict in accepting new Blogs.  Todd came up with a measurement and point system in order to rank blogs accordingly.  It uses a basic multimetric algorithm to obtain a final ranking based on the sum of eight sources, seven of which come from Google, Bloglines, Alexa, Yahoo! and Technorati.

On Wednesday, I received an e-mail stating I got accepted and I am so excited to display my Power Age 150 badge!!

This Java Scripted Badge below should update my Current Rank out of 998 (At the time of this post)

Post from: Social Media Vision

Social Media Vision has been accepted in AdAge Power 150 Ranking

Video Pocket Cam War

I am actually in the market for a new pocket camera that is real easy to use, not too high-tech and for the right price.  Last year the Flip Video Camera killed the market making it popular to all consumers both tech savvy and non.

With the increase in Social Media Video Blogging especially cheesy Facebook birthday videos (LOL) Pocket Cams are all the lastest buzz.

This year it seems that the HD market is in play and the 3 names that kept coming up when doing comparisons were the..

• Flip Ultra-HD – The leading pocket camera maker that boosted its popularity last year with the cheap Flip Camera now with a ultra slick hd version.
• Sony Webbie-HD – Sony’s baby in trying to compete with the Flip market
• Vado-HD – Vado was Flips biggest competitor last year who was cheaper and better specs but because of the media and hype Flip got more attention.  This year though Vado is back with a vengenace.

So below are the Side-By-Side specs and features..lets see who the winner is just on specs alone and maybe ill do a follow-up blog

Flip Ultra-HD

The Flip Video Camera website http://www.theflip.com

• The Price: $199

• Recording Time: 2 hours

• Memory: 8gb

• Screen Size: 2.0″ (Diagonal)

• Weight: 6.0 oz

• Digital Zoom: 2x

• Video Resolution: 1280 x 720 pixels

• Battery Life: up to 2.5 Hours
  

• Battery Option: 2 AA Batteries Rechargeable

• Colors: 2 colors

Sony Webbie-HD

The Webbie Video Camera website http://www.SonyStyle.com/handycam

• The Price: $169

• Recording Time: When using 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo^™ media (sold separately) up to 5 1/2 hours

• Memory: Requires Memory Sticks – up to 16 GB

• Screen Size: 1.8″ (Diagonal)

• Weight: 4 oz

• Digital Zoom: 4x

• Video Resolution: 1440x 1080 pixels

• Battery Life: up to 1 hour 25mins
  

• Battery Option: built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery

• Colors: 3 colors

Vado HD

The Vado Video Camera website http://www.Creative.com

• The Price: $229

• Recording Time: 2 hours

• Memory: 8gb

• Screen Size: 2.0″ (Diagonal)

• Weight: 3.5 oz

• Digital Zoom: 2x

• Video Resolution: 1280 x 720 pixels

• Battery Life: 2 hours
  

• Battery Option: rechargeable lithium ion battery

• Colors: 1 color

Winners

1.  Price – Vado HD $229

2.  Time – Webbie HD 5 hours

3.  Memory – Webbie HD 16GB

4.  Screen – TIE – Flip HD & Vado HD 2″ Diagonal

5.  Weight – Vado HD 3.5 oz

6.  Zoom – Webbie HD 4x

7. Resolution – Webbie HD 1440 x 1080

8.  Battery – Flip HD 2.5 hours

9.  Type Battery – Webbie HD built in rechargeable battery

10.  Color – Webbie HD 3 colors

Totals = Webbie the Winner with 6 out of 9 GOLD.

Specs alone show that the Sony Webbie is the best choice…but does that mean its still the best overall camera?

Hope you enjoyed the side by side!

Post from: Social Media Vision

Flip Ultra-HD vs Sony Webbie-HD vs Vado-HD for Video Pocket Cam War

Chat Catcher by Shannon Whitley was one of my favorite WordPress plugins in capturing Twitter messages and beautifully displaying them as blog comments.  There was also a great support module on Drupal.

I had announced earlier this month that Chat Catcher was shutting down due to high upkeep costs and lack of funding.

May 15th 2009, I received a teaser e-mail from Shannon explaining that Chat Catcher is not shutting down and there was more exciting announcements to come soon.

This was great news indeed and I was very curious to see what else was in store. 

Earlier today I recieved a message on Twitter from Shannon.

Ocasta Labs have injected both funds and resources to extend the Chat Catcher team and to accelerate development of the service thus keeping Chat Catcher alive!!  Hooray!

I have been using BackType Connect plugin to replace Chat Catcher but for some reason due to my blog theme, I was not able to make the plugin show the beautiful avatars on Twitter but the replacement plugin still worked nonetheless which doubled my comment count because I still had Chat Catcher on while waiting for the service to shut down.

Now that Chat Catcher is up and running I am going to keep Chat Catcher and also still use BackType connect because its customizable where I can filter out the Twitter messages and keep the other messages like “Blog comments” and “Digg” scans which Chat Catcher doesn’t support.

So in essence both plugins will compliment each other for my blog and I love it!

Thank you Shannon and Good luck with the funding!

P.S – The founder of Backtype Connect - Christopher Golda, was very helpful in reaching out in providing support to me about trying to fix my avatar problem, I was impressed and greatly appreciated his help.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Chat Catcher Plugin Revives With Funding

What is Chat Catcher? (http://www.chatcatcher.com) (creator Shannon Whitley)

Chat Catcher is a simple Blog Plug-in Application that scans Twitter and FriendFeed for references to your blog posts. When someone links to your blog, their post will be published to your blog’s comments.

What stood out Chat Catcher the most in my eyes is the sheer ability to scan all URL Shortners instead of just one URL Shortner like Dan Zarrella’s Tweetsuite which only scans Tinyurl.  Another great feature was the amazing filter option where others lacked in only filtering one username.

Also Chat Catcher was more efficient and faster than the other competition because Chat Catcher posted the Twitter comments directly to your Blog comments section.  Feedback from the Tweetsuite was that it sometimes was a bit laggy.

• TweetBacks – Yoast’s Plugin

• Tweetsuite – Dan Zarella’s Plugin

I actually have used Chat Catcher just for a short while but as you can see in my previous posts it works amazingly and increases post comment count

The Bad News…

Just as quickly as Chat Catcher was released and became increasingly popular, Shannon Whitley the creator has announced the shut down of Chat Catcher.

Via Twitter – Shannon has admitted that the cost of running Chat Catcher was a burden.

Having only 3 donations…..

Expensive costs of $10 dollars a day

This is indeed sad news especially with the release of a Drupal plugin.  It has however sparked some interest if the funding was there the plugin might stay.  Fellow competitor Dan Zarella seems to be engaging in conversation with the idea and who knows maybe Chat Catcher will be revived down the road…

Below is the actual E-mail sent out

“As Twitter has grown, so has the volume of data that needs to be processed by Chat Catcher.  I don’t have the resources to keep up with it any longer.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Chat Catcher Twitter Plugin Shuts Down

Great Ideas

The hardest and most effective part of a blog or website is hands down the content.  Content comes from great ideas, which of course can come naturally or take a little time to come to.

Brainstorming content while at your desk or workspace may not be always effective at the moment and may come across some amazing ideas later in your day or in an area where you might not have time in writing a blog post at the moment.

Blog Ideas

A way to save some great blog ideas that may occur at a difficult time of day is to just e-mail your blog ideas to an e-mail address you have created dedicated to just storing your blog ideas.

This way you can mobile e-mail your ideas on the fly with your smart phone or even just e-mail ideas when your at work and don’t want to go through the hassle of finding paper and writing on sticky notes that might get lost later in the day.

Its Simple, Clean and Free!

I use this tip and technique personally and it works great!  Hope this helps and would love to hear your thoughts!

Post from: Social Media Vision

Blog Quick Tip: Saving Great Blog Content Ideas On The Fly

A new content discovery platform where bloggers can monetize on their talent (http://www.bloggersbase.com)

I just recently discovered this website early this month in which subsequently I just found out that the website just started in December 2008.

The website is called BloggersBase.com and is a new Blogging community where you can share your content, enter in weekly cash prizes, actively view/engage the best posts of your favorite niche and gain exposure for yourself as a blogger.

I really like this website because it’s still in Beta and I got a chance to explore the community and provide some of my posts on my website that may of not got much exposure with other avenues.   So I got a chance to test a new audience and a new source of results.

I also noticed one of our Favorite Social Media Marketers is Blonde 2.0 is an active contributor and advocate on the site.

The Blog Competition

The website has it’s standard categories to post your content to; Entertainment, Lifestyle, Technology, World Affairs, Special Events and Partnerships.  Each parent category has it’s own sub-categories.

I am a Tech & Social Media blogger so I found Technology->Internet to post to.  What’s unique about BloggersBase is that you can re-publish your content that you already written and does not have to be an exclusive article.  This is great especially if you are time constraint and wishing to just get more exposure with an article you have written before.

Nuggets

When you first start out you are assigned a newbie rank as a blogger and a reader.  You can promote in ranks for both “Blogger” and “Reader” rank with the more you participate in.  With the higher ranks you achieve, you will gain “Influence” or Authority.

For Example:  A lowbie “Reader” rank who comments and votes.  Your votes are counted very little.  When you gain more higher ranks, your votes will have more value.

A lowbie “Blogger” when posting new posts will not be displayed in the voting competition right away.  The newbie blogger will instead be put in a “Nuggets” category where you have to gain certain votes to get out of.  Once out of the “Nuggets” stage you can then post your posts to the voting competition.

Weekly Prizes

Since Bloggersbase is fairly new, you have less competition and more of a chance to win the weekly cash prizes every week.  Like I said, I just started and already won $50 in 2 weeks time.

$40 for first prize and $10 for second prize.

Payment is sent to Paypal which is great because its fast and secure.

The winners will receive also status points for the “Blogger” rank system, promotional prizes (one week was a BloggersBase Ipod), Cash prizes and the title of Author to keep posting posts to the main blog instead of writing new “Nuggets” for that week.

Conclusion

The last reason why you should join BloggersBase is because most posts have already hit the front page results for Google.  This is another great SEO technique similar to posting to EZine Articles and other posting platforms.

So join now, its Free and less competition right now.  I will see you around Bloggersbase.

Post from: Social Media Vision

New Blog Platform Competition Community To Gain Exposure & Money – BloggersBase

About 6pm EST the Twitter world has witnessed a massive DM response saying “hey! Check out this funny blog about you? http:/ / j an nawa litax. blogspot. com ” (Don’t click ont that link)

The link turned out to be a Re-Direct Phishing Scam to a Fake Twitter Log In Screen.  The idea behind this scam is of course tricking users thinking that they somehow logged off of Twitter and will need to re-enter their username and password.

Phishing in the cyberworld is a play-on-words for Fishing which shows scammers in the act of Fishing action to trick people into getting their Passwords.

Don’t Mess With The TwittPack

Twitter is a very tight community that if provoked can turn on you like a rabid wild wolf pack feeding off a hungry frenzy.  We all witnessed the Motrin Mom case where the Twitter world backlashed the Motrin PR people and ultimately started an uproar in the cyber world.

Now another case arises from this and this time the Tight Twitter community has turned on Scammers.  Below is an excerpt of just some conversations going on.  At the time of writing this article the Twitter Search trends has reached over thousands of Tweets just in a 30 minute span.

The Twitter spammer apparently comes from china (via PhishTank.com):

Organization : zhang xiaohu
Name : zhang xiaohu
Address : changningzhonghuainanlu192hao
City : changning
Province/State : Hunan
Country : CN
Postal Code : 421500 

 

The Twitter spammer will sadly feel the wrath of backlash in the Twitter World and will be another guinea pig made into example in not to mess with the Twitter Wolf Pack.

The wildfire has spreaded from the Twitter Staff to Google’s own poster child Matt Cutt.  The scammer who might of gotten away with this kind of thing if they kept this on the down low and really didn’t mass affect everyone but the scammer purley deserves this because you got to be insane to think that the Twitter community will not spread news faster than Superman.

 Now the scammer will more than likely be shut down, banned, pressed charges and be black balled in the cyberworld forever.

Within a half hour the Twitter Staff has uploaded a Static Banner across all the Twitter Home Screens

Power of the wolfpack!

Post from: Social Media Vision

Twitter Wildfire Spread On The Jannawalitax Scam Like A Pack Of Wolves

The 80/20% Statistic is used in Social Media to be used as a guideline when promoting your self or your business.

Many users and sites have developed similar guidelines like 1 out of 4 promotion or every other promotion.  The bottom line is that most guidelines and roles to follow can be based on the 80/20% rule in Social Media.

80% Portion

80% of your sociable content should not be based on your shameless self promotion.  This content should be used to engage other people’s work you have liked or content that has nothing to do with your promotion but rather gray area and safer subjects.

An example of a gray area content would be talking about a subject that is in your niche of field but you haven’t specifically said your own brand.   This is like going to a Mustang convention and talking about cars with people without having to notify people you are a Car Salesman.

20% Portion

This portion is where you can start promoting your content or talk about your brand.  Keep in mind, nobody likes a door-to-door sales man who constantly throws up shameless marketing that is unwanted.

Keep it simple and use common sense.  How would you like to see content in Social Media that does nothing but shamelessly promote their business and provides no substance in interaction and contributions?

Throw in your stuff sporadically and enjoy Social Media without making this a difficult task at hand.  Don’t focus on over analyzing your contributions, just keep it minimal and you will do fine.

Below are ways to incorporate the 80/20 rules in your Social Media sites

Social Bookmarking – Social Bookmarking sites like Digg have a built in community of users that engage in Social Networking on a daily basis.  These sites are not just for sharing content but also social networking.  Do not just shamelessly Digg your own content and prove no real value of other websites you find useful.  

This will blackmark you in the community and you are doing nothing but hurting yourself.  If you allow yourself to help contribute more often and become a better community member chances are you will gain more friends and better results in getting more votes.  This is a win/win situation, don’t forget to help promote your friends or your own favorite articles that is not your own.

Twitter – Twitter is crucial for real time results because users can see your Twitter persona fairly quickly and if they notice you are doing nothing but promoting your blog or not providing any value in your tweets, you will notice a decrease in followers and will gain a reputation online as a spammer.  You will see HUGE results if you apply the 80/20 rule here or 1 out of 5 tweets here. 

Social Networks – Networks like Myspace and Facebook may not be built on heavy contributions like Social Bookmarking, Twitter and Blogs but the same rules apply here if you are constantly promoting your content via wall posts or shared link content.  This is by far the most powerful way to get your promotion out there if done correctly.  

Forget about trying to sell your image and just focus on building a relationship with your new online friends.  Chances are you will get results without having to promote or ask for it by the sheer fact of online trust and reputation gained.

Blogs - Granted your blogs are whatever you want it to be and can be just a sole money making machine site that all it does is self promotions but keep in mind the most successful Bloggers out there gain much success when they don’t focus on selling and just writing valuable c0ntent.  

Once the content is established Professional Bloggers find ways of implementing their business and sales in posts sporadically and never continuously.  The 80/20 rule is being used by professional Bloggers for a long time now and you may not of realized it but the best advertising are not the ones that are most obvious.

Post from: Social Media Vision

The 80/20 Ratio Promotion Marketing In Social Media