Twitter Puts The Squeeze on Tiny.ly URL Shortener

Achtung! About a week or more ago Twitter blocked Tiny.ly the URL shortening service.

Much to my dismay seeing as it's the only shortener I've been using and I'm sure a lot of you guys have been using it as well.

I've switched over to goo.gl which seems to be a great alternive.

It features a nice bit of analytics too for all your links.

Also if you need it goo.gl goes a step further and even creates your very own QR barcode. Those are those weird looking alien barcodes you may of seen all over the place.

A little look at Goo.gl

If you're using any of the Google services it's probably a good idea to just start using goo.gl seeing as in the future I imagine your goo.gl link data will be integrated into all your other services such as Google Analytics.

If they do that it would take the URL shortening to the next level.

It has it's own API now so expect to see it in your favorite apps soon.

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7 Reasons You Should Use #Hashtags In Your Tweets

A hashtag is simply a keyword marked by the # symbol in front of it.

In some geekier circles it's known as an octothorp, which might be good to know if you're appearing on Jeopardy.

It is used to help categorize tweets and help you find similar ones using that topic's tag. This is done by clicking on the hashtag which will show all the tweets using that tag.

They are mainly used as an interactive search function and not for labeling idea they were originally invented for.

Example: Optimize your Blogger post titles for better PR in minutes with one code - http://ow.ly/391af - #blogger #SEO

I use mine on the end of the tweet but a tag could be any word in the tweet itself.

Many of you no doubt use these in every tweet but you may not know of its true potential, especially if you're not using them regularly.

Here's some reasons why #Hashtags are great!

1. One obvious reason to use them is it allows people to get a jist of what your tweet is about at a glance. Categorizing your own tweets is a good way for people to find other tweets in that topic. This is good especially if you have an ongoing series or do many follow-up posts.

2. There is always the possibility of your tag going viral and start trending on twitter, which would be too good to be true. Even if it would be a 15 minutes of fame kind of deal.

3. Paper.li is an online user-generated magazine put together largely from hashtags, it's amazing how many I've seen my posts on just because I've used the tag. I get a decent amount of hits from these user's e-zines and not only that you actually get back links while you're at it. 4. It makes your tweets easier to find and get picked up by social media tools such as Tweet Adder and Tweet Big which will lead to more hits and more followers ultimately. Clients like TweetDeck and HootSuite allow you to follow a tag, for example.

5. Takes boring plain text and adds a layer of interactivity which is what social media is all about. Not using them only stifles your tweeting prowess, tapping into the popularity of the hashtagging phenomena.

6. You can create your own hashtag of course! This is great for businesses if someone wants to follow your business by a category exclusively to your business or product. Take advantage of the #coupon craze perhaps?

7. Thanks to websites like hashtracking.com you can almost must a campaign of sorts and track the popularity, reach, and impressions to see how well a certain tagged tweet is doing.

Empire Avenue: Social Media Never Sleeps

If you haven't heard about Empire Avenue yet it's a social media stock exchange game which allows you to invest Eeaves in brands and people and eventually make it to the top of the corporate ladder in your niche.

It launched back in July of 2010 but I've heard a lot of chatter about it lately and seems to be growing in popularity.

The goal of the game is to be successful buying and selling virtual stocks and at the same time connecting with other people and brands though the site's social media aspects such as Shout Outs, Mentions, Recommendations, Advertising, Status Updates and the various chat rooms and communities.

Is Tweet Big Safe To Use?

As a sort of follow up to my post Gain Thousands of Targeted Twitter Followers With TweetBig! I will address a question I think a considerable amount of people wonder about when it comes to Tweet Big and other Twitter tools in the same vein.

Is Tweet Big safe to use? - Short answer - Yes

As someone who has been using the service since its start and taking advantage of all it has to offer I can for certain say that Tweet Big is a great and powerful tool that is completely safe.

When it comes to follower tools out there this one is probably the most legit.

As with anything moderation is key, that's not to say you can't get several hundred new followers a day using it's highly targeted follow functions. You just set up an initial group of users similar to you and let it go to work. It's been rather worry free actually.

Just check out my stats here for yourself to see just how far my account has come.

Over 40 Awesome Twitter Icon Packs For Your Blog

I've rounded up some of the best icon sets for Twitter I could find. A nice range of icons, birds and buttons you can use in your next design project for your blog.

- Twitter Icons Pack by ~Reawake on deviantART

- Twitter Icons TweetMyWeb 7 PNG by *LazyCrazy on deviantART

- Twitter Icons .PSD by ~JuliusX on deviantART

Monitor Your Online Presence With Klout

clout - noun \'klau?t\ - pull, influence, strong authority

When it comes to the online world of social media do you have any clout?

The new website Klout.com does its best gauge your online influence in a fresh and fun way.

That is really all you should take it for, fun, but it can be a good way to see how well your social media campaign is going using all the various graph charts.

A downward spiral will be easily seen following an online social debacle of some sort.

Social Measurments

Klout measures a few areas of your online dominion.

Amplification - Likelihood that your content will be acted upon

Network - Influence level of your engaged audience

True Reach - Size of your engaged audience

Influence Matrix, woah

Are you a Dabbler or a Celebrity? Klout will pretty accurately place you in some sort of category based on what topics you talk about, the volume of updates you put out, who you follow and who follows you.

There are 16 possible classifications you can fall into and displays your top influencers and their classifications.

Individual Achievements To Toot Your Horn

In a page straight out of Xbox 360's gamer addiction frenzy comes Klout's achievements system to appeal to the gamer in us all.

You can then of course Tweet and Share you're achievements for all to see to show your greatness, which in doing so creates some conversation in the process and that's what it's all about.

Klout is a relatively new site that I see can only gain better features and better tracking. Signing up early can give you a great idea on how your brand is growing which can sometimes be a hard thing to visually realize, especially early on.

JustUnfollow unveils it's new Whitelist feature

For those of you who use Twitter you know the need to unfollow people at some point.

To do this effectively you need to be able to know who isn't following you back and how long you've followed them.

JustUnfollow does what it says it allows you to just simply unfollow people quickly and easily.

Just sign in with your Twitter account and hit the big Show Non-Followers from their it displays your oldest non-followers.

Then it's as simple as selecting who you want to unfollow. Up to a few days ago you could accidentally unfollow your best friend or your favorite TV show.

They have just added their new Whitelist feature that will remove them from the unfollow list so you can spam unfollow without fear.

Unless you upgrade you can only unfollow 100 people a day which effectively is plenty.

JustUnfollow isn't like the other bulk unfollow tools, it allows you to personally select the users you want to unfollow and now with the new Whitelist it makes it even more useful.

Social Media Optimization, A Basic Marketing Strategy Guide

In the not so distant past search engine optimization was one of the best things you could do to ensure a nice steady stream of traffic.

It's not to say that getting on the first page of Google results isn't a good idea but with the absolute explosion in recent years of social media sites you would be shooting yourself in the foot if you don't get involved in things like Twitter and Facebook.

The sheer volume of users on social networking sites alone should be enough motivation for any blogger to take serious notice and make sure their blog is "shareable." This is the basic tenant of SMO.

Updated Nov 23 - 2010

GoTwitr, An Amazing Free Alternative to TweetBig's Twitter Tools

A few weeks ago I introduced you to TweetBig, a wonderful Twitter tool designed to get you targeted followers and much more. While it is outstanding, it costs money. I have received a lot of feedback on my post and it got me to thinking, is there a free counterpart to TweetBig out there?

After a bit of scouring and testing of a few other Twitter tools I came across GoTwitr and tested it out for about a week or so. While I still use TweetBig I can honestly say GoTwitr is an awesome free service that allows you to accomplish nearly the same thing as TweetBig.

When it comes to gaining Twitter followers there are three main things you need the ability to do, find like-minded people and follow them, wait for them to follow you back and unfollow the ones who don't. GoTwitr easily meets these requirements with their two main features.

Keyword Follow

Much like TweetBig's "Keyword Gatherer" tool, Keyword Follow searches for users using a particular keyword related to your blog. In my case I want to target bloggers so I type in "blogging" and I'm presented with a list of around 30 users who either tweet about blogging or have it contained in their bio. You can see an example below.

You have the option to click the "Follow" link on the right of their description or check the box to the left and at the bottom click the "Follow Selected" button. This is primarily how you can gain friends and followers with GoTwitr and it works great.

Smart Purge

Smart Purge is your ticket to get rid of those pesky non-followers. Granted TweetBig's Follow Time bomb feature is infinitely better since you can choose the number of days to allow the user to follow you back but GoTwitr's Smart Purge gets the job done just the same.

There is a limit to how many people you can purge and follow a day on GoTwitr since the API calls are very intensive and its free. Rarely do I get stopped because I hit my limit though. When it comes to Twitter you don't want to abuse it, Twitter doesn't post it's rules and it's a bit unclear what they are exactly. When it comes to following/unfollowing and massive tweeting, moderation is key.

'Grow, Build, Tweet'

Besides those two core features GoTwitr hosts much more. The site features a complete way to manage your tweets, direct messages, followers and friends. You also have the ability to set up groups to help manage your Twitter community a bit better. Which comes in handy for certain situations as you're able to make group members immune from the Smart Purge feature and see what your group is tweeting etc.

If you're looking for an impressive Twitter management tool that's 100% free and safe to use, GoTwitr is your website.

I'd love to hear what type of Twitter tools you're using out there, how do you manage your Twitter following?

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Gain Thousands of Targeted Twitter Followers With TweetBig!

There a lot of so-called "tools" out there on the internet claiming at a push of the button to simplify your success. At the push of a bunch of buttons TweetBig WILL get you targeted followers. This is probably one of the few "tools" I have tested that actually does what it claims "out of the box".

When you first go to the site you are greeted by great presentation, the website is simple and well designed much like any service should be. For $1 you can try it out for a week, so for the sake of blogging science I laid down my hard-earned dollar. My twitter account is still pretty new so I actually really wanted to gain more followers. After a few days my follower base tripled with minimal effort. I know when you hear the claims of "Do nothing and get tons of followers..." you're like me, you say "Ya right!" but TweetBig actually does just this. Let's talk about how it works.

Get Trendy, How to Utilize Growing Trends to Generate Content and Traffic

Many of us bloggers get stuck trying to come up with great posts, or maybe we have just beaten the same topic to death. It's definitely good to have a niche but it's also good to sometimes do something new every once in a while.

Blogging about the same subject can become a bit tiresome. One way to counteract this and to breathe some new life into you and your blog is writing about something new and fresh. But what? Why not pick something that is insanely popular AND you find interesting. After all that's pretty much the whole point of blogging isn't it?

One way to see whats popular is by examining the global internet trends that are happening right now. You may even get lucky and find something very similar to your blog's main topic.

One thing you should keep in mind here is that your RSS subscribers, the people who read your blog everyday will see this post. You must treat each and every one of them as your biggest critic, after all they felt your blog was worth subscribing to and are expecting a certain brand of content.

With that being said, if I created a long post about how awesome Polamalu's superman tackle was I'm fairly certain I would lose at least a few readers. Accordingly, your "off the beaten path" post should at least be loosely related at best. It's a bit risky if you have a narrow niche but let's look at some of the benefits of using trends to find a suitable new and fresh topic.

Benefits of using Trends

1. Find a new popular topic to branch out on that may potentially attract new readers and as a result more traffic.

2. If you have varied blog with several topics or an anything goes type blog you'll have an endless source of topics. Think of South Park, there's a reason why they never run out of material.

3. It can get you out of your niche rut, or cure your writer's block if you stumble upon the right topic.

4. If you can write the post fast enough while still maintaining quality it may catch on pretty quick with it being so popular as it is. Strike while the iron is hot they say, and getting in on the ground floor of an emerging topic is always an amazing thing.

5. Even if you don't end up writing a blog post after examining the growing trends at the very least you'll be more cool. I'm just kidding, but you will have a small grasp of whats going on around the net and that's never bad.

So where do you start?
Well first and foremost I'm not saying you should write a post on the latest American Idol results because it's wildly popular to the masses. What should happen is once you have evaluated the emerging trend feeds if there is something there of interest to you go for it.

twitter.com

One website for acquiring some trend data on the fly is twitter.com It's ever-changing with user's tweets and you can click on the keyword to literally see what people are saying about the topic. After scrolling through a few pages of that the old brain should be stormin' at that point. If you sit and watch it almost becomes a chat room of sorts. If you find yourself wanting to jump into the conversation you might have just found yourself a new blog post.

http://www.google.com/trends

Use the power of Google to obtain trend data and popular searches. Most of the data will be very similar to Twitter's hot keywords due to most people use both sites. Grab even more data using Google Insights. This is a good tool to see what everyone in the entire world is interested in, talk about a content gold mine.

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How to Add Custom Social Media Buttons to Blogger Posts Easily

Social media is a wonderful way to promote your blog, and adding the option to share your blog posts is important.

If a visitor thinks your post is interesting they will want to share it fast and easily.

You don't want to miss the opportunity of your post being spread throughout the internet on some of the world's most popular sites.

You may also want to get a bit stylish while doing so, this guide will show you how to add whatever share buttons you want to the bottom of your posts.

This tutorial works well so take your time and go through the steps one by one and I'm also here to help so comment below if you have any questions.

If you're leary about doing DIY template tweaks make a dummy blog to test it out first before you add them to your main blog. And always make a backup of your template's file before attempting any editing.

Monday Blogger's Insight: Search Marketing Mythbusting, Multiple Gmail Users, and Social Media

Here you will find links to posts I have found interesting and relevant to helping you be a better, more successful and effective blogger from the ever changing blogosphere.

Automate Your Blog Update in Facebook

	waveofweb.com - My friend over at waveofweb has made me aware through this post of a free service that allows you to automate your updates and have them posted on Facebook and Twitter. It's also a blog directory that I highly recommend as well!

29 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed

	mashable.com - has an absolute beast of a list of their best social media resources. Lots of great articles in this list for bloggers and designers like "HOW TO: Gracefully Promote Yourself Online" and "Top 5 Web Font Design Trends to Follow".

Five Quality Score Myths Busted

	blog.traffick.com - Andrew Goodman has posted a great article on search marketing on traffick's blog. Lots of good info on Google Adwords and Pay per Click advertising.

Log In to Multiple Gmail Accounts Simultaneously Without Any Add-on

	waveofweb.com - Another great informative post from waveofweb showing us something I bet you weren't aware of. If you're like me you have two or more gmail accounts for various reasons. Find out how to use gmail effectively if you have multiple gmail accounts without any third party plug-in.

That's it for this week.
If you have a great article you think should go into the next link roundup feel free to contact me.

Seesmic Desktop 2: A Social Networker's Dream?

Pick Your Services

  Chances are you have quite a few, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube you name it. Seesmic Desktop 2 tries to bring this all together in one package. Add your accounts and with one interface update your status inside a clean UI. Promoting your blog using social media seems to be the norm these days. After all that's where most of the people spend their time.

  With Seesmic Desktop 2 you will connected to every facet of your social web. If you're a twitter fan you'll love it, it updates tweets in real time and has overall good support for twitter. At it's core right now I'd say it is a Twitter application, but there is more in store.