Knowledge Graph –
Helps You Find What You
Meant To Search For!

This is the kind of improvements we all look forward to seeing from Google!

You’ve likely heard me joke that one of my most valuable skills is knowing WHAT to ask from Google and HOW to ask it! We laugh, but we know that getting exactly the right info we want is still sometimes tedious!

The new Google Knowledge Graph will actually help the average user get better results by requiring input to be “less smart” when we search…

For example, (once this is in place), if you search for Andromeda … the search will then ask you whether you mean the Andromeda Galaxy, Andromeda the tv show, or Andromeda the rock band… (filling in contextual information you may have forgotten to include with a simple easy click).

Google writes: “Get an under the hood look at the next frontier in Search, from the team at Google behind the technology. The Knowledge Graph is a huge collection of the people, places and things in the world and how they’re connected to one another. With this technology, Google can get you the best possible answers and help jump start your discovery.” Learn more at this link.

 
Introducing the Knowledge Graph

Context is a LOT harder for a computer/script than you might imagine – though its the basis of how our brains work.

Adding contextual information to our search will result in a more pleasant search experience (and less of trying to ignore unrelated search results when we failed to include important context clues in the search box originally).

Knowledge Graph options will also be available from the tablet and mobile views.

Will the Google Knowledge Graph change SEO?

Somewhat… but generally for the (substantially) better for the end user…

Now, a search for a general “short-tail” keyword will have “options” that will draw clicks off the first result.  At the moment these clicks are in the right hand column and do not disrupt the top spaces. (I have however spotted a top-space box that I can’t seem to reproduce that is likely coming.)

Example of Google Knowledge Graph Altering Search Results Page

It definitely catches my eye that even in the personalized view, no social appears in the right pane… or even ads for that matter! (Subject to change of course!)

As to whether this has a negative impact on SEO… only one question really comes to mind:

Does a site selling (for example) Andromeda (TV Show) t-shirts honestly deserve any clicks when a kid is researching a school paper about the Andromeda galaxy?

We likely agree that the answer is no.

However, we all know that some search results produce that sort of thing even though we know they never should have.

Because this action is “corrective”, it will impact a few sites that are ranking high for short tail keywords they don’t belong on… which most of us would likely agree is acceptable consequences. However, once the click-through to the corrected topic is made, high ranking sites should remain high ranking for their right (adjusted) usage.

Marketers usually know that a short-tail (broad) keyword is not a buying keyword anyways and majority of the focus goes on keywords closer to purchase (such as “Andromeda t-shirts”).

So, in this way, the Google Knowledge Graph will impact SEO but I find myself untroubled by the outcome.

What are your thoughts on Google’s Knowledge Graph?

Do you think it’ll be a helpful tool?

Let’s discuss in the comments below!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: I think that this, when if properly blended with personalized/social search, is a lot closer to making the search results produce the things we’ve needed than ever before! 

Zoom In On Your Audience
To Zoom Up In Traffic!

Want more targeted visitors and a higher conversion rate? Then it is important that every aspect of your website including how you promote it speaks to your target audience. You want your website to be the place your target market comes to get their needs met. The need might be to find out where they can find your products or services. It does not matter if you’re online or an offline business, the website can attract people to the website and the website can attract people to your store, no matter where it is.

Target market identification is just one of several ways to get and keep traffic that I cover in my new report, “Traffic Building System: How to Get More Targeted Traffic to Your Website“.

It goes something like this:

Potential visitor reads your article on EzineArticles.com, and enjoys it enough to click through to your website or blog. The visitor reads your blog posts and signs up for your newsletter to receive a free eReport about your products or services. Next, the visitor receives pre-written emails directly to their in box that promotes certain products and services on your website that you want to sell. The recipient clicks through, (or drives to your store) buys something, and gets on yet another list of customers, and then you repeat the process.

This is the basics of your marketing funnel but for it to work you have to have decided WHO it’s funneling out of the masses.

To know your target market you must know:

Who They Are — What is their age, sex, marital status? What do they care about as a group?

What They Need & Desire – Once you know them, you should be able to make an educated guess on their needs and desires.

When They Want It — This is an important component in knowing your target audience.  For instance, if they are normally never online on Sundays at 2pm don’t send them an email newsletter that day.

Where Do They Live – This can be interpreted as what state they are in, but it really means where do they hang out online. You want to be there so that you can observe how they behave, what questions they ask, and get ideas on services and / or products to offer to them.

Why You -  This is a question that is more about you than them: Why are you the right person to deal with this target market? What makes you qualified? Do you know?

You need to answer all these questions so that you can provide articles they will enjoy reading and obtain value from, separate from anything else but pique their interest in more. In addition, you want the products and services that you offer to fill their needs, and desires. If you truly know your target audience down to their age, sex, marital status, and income you’ll be more likely to be able to create solutions that they will want to purchase and share with their friends.

Once you know what type of products or services you want to provide, and to whom, you’ll be better able to create content that is compelling and attracts those visitors. By using systems such as message boards to find out what your target market is asking about, you can get an inside and early view of what to offer them. When you are offering appropriate information, content, products and / or services to the right people, your content will naturally attract more targeted audiences

 ~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image source: open source image

What You Don’t Know About
Image Licensing
Could REALLY Hurt You!

Bloggers & Marketers beware!

Image misuse is a dirty secret among some bloggers and social marketers.

(And many of these individuals are people who get bent out of shape and acting hurt when someone then steals their posts… but I digress…)

If the morality of it isn’t enough for you, authorities are much more actively helping individuals that own images pursue legal action against thieves.

Now any image can be drag-and-dropped into http://images.google.com and Google will tell you where all the matching copies are! (Hint: Your no longer “safe” just because your blog is crappy and doesn’t rank well.)

When it comes to the images you must:

1) Own purchased rights to all images you use, and know the license limits, or….

2) Be using public domain images, or

3) Be using “commercial use allowed, creative commons, attribution required” and providing a link from that page to the author as specified in that image, or…

4) Create the image yourself!

Random images taken from Google should NEVER be used (on Facebook, your blog, wherever) as you are at high risk of violating copyright.

I get a lot of images from iconfinder.com (using the commercial use filter), from “Morgue Files” (search for it, public domain), and purchased through 123RF.com (aff) or iStockPhoto (aff).

Royalty Free images (such as from 123RF & iStockPhoto above) are still purchased images. They are not free, just that you do not have to pay a royalty on every single time you use them. Keep in mind that many have strict rules about usage and can not be used in products you plan to make available for reselling (like PLR).

You can also get images from Flickr’s creative commons search but remember you MUST link to the source from the page the image is used on and give credit to the author. That means that these images (in whole or in part) are NOT able to be used as Facebook Cover images because there is no way to put the backlink on the same page effectively. (Clicking to see the link does not qualify).

The last thing you want is a copyright holder sending a shut-down notice to your hosting company and taking your site offline while you battle in court. I’ve met numerous people now who HAVE been busted. One guy I met at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) conference had to pay over $16,000 – Definitely something you want to avoid!

I purchase credit bundles through 123RF.com so I’m never tempted to go steal images.

When I can NOT find an image, I make one, even if it’s very rough, and maybe just words, in my graphics program (paint.net). This lets me still have the image that Facebook and other sites need for thumbnails, while not breaking any laws.

I also try to avoid sharing blog posts and other content that I know has (or often has) stolen images. The corrosion of “safe harbor” laws endanger me … and besides, I don’t share a thief’s content with my friends.

(Many people however are stealing “simply” because they don’t realize that Google Images is not a free image pool for them to use as they please!)

Remember that your business is your business. Treat it as such. Take care of it. (And get a LegalShield plan to protect it when things DO go wrong!)

Where do you get YOUR images from? What’s your favorite source?

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: If you haven’t tried it already, take an image that’s being shared virally, download it to your computer, then visit http://images.google.com and drag-and-drop the saved image into the search box and see the really cool results. 

Improve Your Feed
By Using The Acquaintances List

We’ve talked a lot about the HUGE power of using Facebook Lists to make Facebook easier…

But the new “Smart Lists” are a little different and deserve their own special coverage as they bring yet another set of tools to help you survive your news feed each day!

When used together, lists, smartlists, game/app filtering and FBPurity can return your news feed to something you actually appreciate reading!

SmartLists behave very different than “normal” lists so pay attention here as each one of them is unique.

The “Acquantances” list is used to allow you to easily “throttle” how much content you receive from people you are not particularly emotionally close too.

You first add people (Facebook makes useful suggestions) to the list and then you set WHAT you’d like to see from those people in your primary news feed. This removes a lot of valid but uninteresting to you posts from your feed and does so easily and silently.

Pretty straight forward, here’s how to get started.

Facebook Acquaintances Smart List Settings

Steps To Using the Facebook Acquaintances Smart List:

1. Click on the word Facebook in the upper left hand corner to return to the main page and newsfeed.

2. In the left hand column, scroll down to where you see Friends. If you do not see friends, go to the very bottom of the content in the left sidebar and click “more” to make it open up fully.

3. Click on “Friends” (which opens the area for Friend Lists) and then click on the smart list (they all have colored icons) that says “Acquaintances”.  That will take you to the page we see above in the screenshot.

4. From here, you can use the “Manage” drop down to deselect the content types you want to suppress from your main news feed. For me, I uncheck all except “Status Updates” and “Photos”.  Because I can still manually alter the settings for each individual, I leave it a little wide, and then I use the individual settings if I need to hide photos as well.

 5. At the bottom of the right hand sidebar you will see a “See All Suggestions” link…. click that to open the suggestions tool (and then see the next screenshot below).

Facebook Acquaintances Smart List Suggestions Tool

Here in the Acquaintances Suggestions tool we see the power of Facebook EdgeRank being used to calculate the individuals that we rarely interact with. I found the suggestions very accurate though I unchecked several who I was likely to re-engage with soon.

Scroll near the bottom and click the link that says “Include # More Suggestions” to make this page open fully. Now scroll through the images/names and check/uncheck as appropriate. Then click the Add To Acquaintances button.

People will be (silently) added to the acquaintances list and your news feed will now be more relavant to you!

This is simply a “bulk” way of setting a lot of these content restrictions at once that we can set by hand but is relatively time consuming.  I think this is a nice move by Facebook…. particularly for those of us with old classmates/colleagues that we are not “near and dear” with!

Go set yours up and then post a reply and let me know if you have any questions and how it worked for you!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: This is not a replacement for FBPurity as this does something that only Facebook can do. This works well WITH FbPurity to further clean up my feed.

Upward Bound
On The Social Train!

One of the most prominent trends in internet marketing today is the trend of social media. Social media is getting rapidly increasing in important.

Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur working from your house or a Fortune 500 company, you simply cannot afford to ignore social media anymore.

==> Studies Show Buying Decisions Are Influenced

Studies show that the majority of consumers today are influenced in one way or another by the posts of their friends.

If a friend recommends a brand, a place, a movie or a restaurant through social media, that person is much more likely to become a customer of that establishment.

On the other hand, if a friend complains about a business through social media, research also shows that consumers are much less likely to buy from that place.

In other words, what people say about you on social media plays a big part in consumers’ buying decisions today.

==> People Are More Willing to Share Links

When social media was first launched, people were cautious of sharing links. Sharing a link on Facebook appeared similar to sharing a link in an email, which seemed almost spam-like. In email, posting too many links is socially discouraged.

Today however, users understand that sharing links on Facebook or Twitter is perfectly acceptable behavior. Users are sharing more and more links today.

That means that if you publish top-notch content or do something innovative, the potential for your content to make its way around the internet is much higher.

==> Networks Influence One Another

The cross-pollination of social media networks is also getting increasingly faster. A post that gets popular on Reddit is rapidly going to get shared on Facebook. Something posted on Facebook will quickly be link shortened and posted on Twitter.

With or without your help, your social network is going to cross-post and cross-pollinate with other social media networks. The reach of good content and good promotions through social media is larger today than it has ever been.

==> Social Sentiment

One hotly debated topic is whether or not search engines can actually read the sentiment inside comments and tweets.

After all, if there are 1,000 tweets about “I Love Brand X,” it shouldn’t have the same impact as 1,000 tweets about “I Hate Brand X.”

The general consensus is that Google can actually read comment sentiment to some degree. Of course it can’t read highly complex comments yet, but by and large Google can distinguish between positive sentiment and negative sentiment.

It’s believed that sentiment plays a large role in rankings – as large as the number of shares itself.

==> Social Influence

The authority of the tweets, mentions, likes, +1′s etc are, of course, a measurement of how powerful each creator is. If they have a lot of followers and a strong brand, a mention or share from them weighs more than if they were a brand new account.

==> Starting to Influence Search Results

Social media is starting to influence search results. Getting exposure in social media is going to help you increase your rankings in the search engines.

In “3 Google SEO Changes Rattle SEOs & Bloggers Alike“, we looked at some dramatic shifts that are occurring in SEO today and social is most certainly one of them!

All this adds up to one thing: Social Media is getting more and more important by the day. In the past, social media could be just another marketing tactic you dabbled in. Today, however, it needs to be an integral part of any good business strategy.

Social influence is also beginning to be factored into SEO and shares from influencers in your niche can cause your content to perform favorably in the future!

And just because social media loves fun, viral topics, I thought you might enjoy Heidi Cohen’s “5 Dr. Seuss Quotes & Their Social Media Lessons“!

If you haven’t already gotten your foot in the door, start by choosing one network to master. Start with Facebook or Twitter, then move on to bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit. Learn the system, build an audience and get in the habit of regularly posting great content.

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image credit: me (and the appropriate social sites)

Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hills….
And Hidden Magic In The WordPress Comments…

You probably already know that blog commenting can build your brand…. but with a subtle twist you really turn up the results!

Plus, you can get this additional boost to your results with no additional cost, only a little additional work and the only tool you might need is a notepad or Reader to keep track of sites you can use it on! 

If you’ve been doing blog commenting as a traffic generation method for any time at all… you’re likely kicking yourself for missing this little twist!

I suggest keeping either a notepad file or a Reader folder of blogs that meet the criteria of using an email based auto-email on reply system such as ReplyMe (many top blogs do) and that has a high enough PageRank/Alexa/Traffic for you to want to keep an eye on.

This will not work as well with sites that depend on the commentor to have subscribed to ALL the comments, as your comment will be lost in the flood in the receivers inbox. I also suggest utilizing it on mid-range PR sites, which are big enough to benefit you, but small enough that your actions stand out and can be appreciated.

Google may actually be planning to further the importance of well constructed comment engagement (and their own comment system) with influencer scoring of comments in the near future.

I hope it would go without saying the high importance of answering comments on your OWN blog (and taking advantage of a plugin like ReplyMe to ensure your visitor SEES your comments). That, admittedly is something I sometimes struggle with but which makes a huge impact when done right.

Again, the whole purpose of the comment system, is to build a conversation, not create dead-ends. When you learn to leverage this – both as a blog owner – and a blog visitor – you can accomplish a lot!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

Top Fans for April 2012!

Congrats to Jim Landers from Jupiter Jim’s Marketing team @ https://www.facebook.com/JupiterJimsMarketingTeam & @ http://jupiterjimsmarketingteam.com/ for coming in by a landslide!

Click like and give these guys and gals a shoutout ♥ They rocked it!

Want to see how you scored last month and be able to track your points for May? Click here to see the rankings! https://www.facebook.com/Ask.Kim/app_118098318208381 

Click here to learn more about how I track my top fans using an app that lets me verify the results and is not a random selection tool unlike many lesser apps out there.

Thank you to everyone for your support this month and I look forward to seeing you at the top in May!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

Building Website Traffic
With Private Label Rights

 Sometimes a lack of time to create fresh content for your target audience really can put a damper on your day!

You have to get traffic to your website, and you need to work on drawing traffic to your website on pretty much every single business day until the site is established enough to do some coasthing.

Thankfully, there is a way that you can supplement your personal content while still feeding your hungry audience AND building traffic!

One really great way is to use PLR, which stands for Private Label Rights content. PLR is “jump start” content that takes the pre-planning and brainstorming out of content creation. It gives you the benefit of someone elses brainstorming, ideas and organization of the post while being designed for you to add your special touches and voice to it.

PLR is just one of several ways to get and keep traffic that I cover in my new report, “Traffic Building System: How to Get More Targeted Traffic to Your Website“. 

You can purchase private label that is text content, video content, eBooks, eReports, eCourses, and more. Whatever you want, it’s out there. The real key to using PLR is to 1) USE IT and 2) Use it properly.  I’ll also add that starting with high quality PLR makes a world of difference. You’d be surprised at how many people buy PLR and never, ever use it. You’d also be shocked to know that most people don’t know how to use PLR in the most effective way.

Here’s some tips to get you started…

Never use PLR as Written — Always rewrite PLR. (Learn how to do that here.) Add your own keywords, your own voice, and ensure that nothing written is wrong or out of date. Run it through Copyscape.com, or a program like Grammarly.com to ensure that your content that is created is original. You might think that is strange, but you can create completely original content using PLR if you use it as a starting off point, and rewrite in your own voice, with your targeted audience in mind and using your keywords. Generally 30% unique content is the definition of original and I prefer the bulk of that to be at the beginning and ending to “frame” the content.

Repurpose PLR — If you get PLR that is written, try turning it into informative Youtube.com videos. Video is an excellent way to attract targeted visitors to your website.  You can post them on Youtube.com first, then use the code provided by Youtube.com and post directly on your blog if you want to.  You can also break apart a PLR eBook and turn it into separate emails for your list or a viral eBook that you allow readers to pass on to others. Don’t forget that you can use quotes from all of the above in tweets, Facebook updates, and other social media. Each piece of PLR carries a license (and almost all of them are different). Consult the license before purchase to find out what you can or can not do with that particular piece.

Use PLR for Brainstorming — Sometimes we just get stuck when we are creating content day after day. If you have a good source of quality PRL you can use the PLR as a jumping off point. If you have a good source for PLR you can usually be pretty sure that what is written is accurate, so you can skip the research phase and go straight to writing about the topic at hand. Many times you can get five or more blog posts or articles out of one PLR article if you use the PLR as research. Alternatively, I often turn a dozen pieces of PLR into about four or five blog posts by blending them together and weeding out the weaker segments. Add some finishing touches and you’re good to go.

When you honor these rules then almost all of the “downsides” of PLR completely vanish and you’re left with a happy audience, more social shares and more traffic! Win!  In the 3 Biggest Mistakes PLR Buyers Make you’ll see these same sentiments repeated by others!

Learn 7 additional tips to build traffic to your site here.

PLR is my life-saver to help me keep up my site volume while allowing me to “essentially” sneak in a week away from the blog to work on other parts of my marketing funnel from time to time.  I prepare, edit and scheduling them in advance, mixing them with some original content I’ve also precrafted.

When you start with high quality PLR that is well targeted to your audience/niche then the only “magic” required is to do a good rewrite/edit and hit publish!

 ~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: Curious where my favorite PLR comes from? Check out Melissa Ingold (Special Report Club), Nicole Dean (Easy PLR), Alice Seba (DIY PLR), Tiffany Dow (PLR Mini Mart), master-resale-rights.com (mixed quality), and lastly tradebit.com (cheapest but often not best quality). I’m a proud affiliate of most of these and if you make a purchase they are obligated by law to buy me a cheeseburger

image source: me

How To Change Your
Facebook Fan Page Name

Facebook Now Offers *Two* Ways To Change Your Business Page Name

Updated: 5/5/2012

Please Note: These methods do NOT change the custom vanity URL (username) for the Page, which currently remains completely non-changeable.

What the Rules on Fan Page Name Changing Used To Be

Prior to the most recent update, the hard and fast rule by Facebook was that you absolutely could not change your Facebook Fan Page name… EVER!

As you can see, the only solution for anything from a typo to a business change was the delete button. Suffice to say this didn’t make people terribly thrilled.

However, the precaution has been necessary as Facebook has needed to actively restrict someone from making a page in a generic name, farming a ton of fans, and then renaming the page (possibly after selling it)!

Can you imagine the nightmare if you people were suddenly able to easily generate and sell pages with 100,000 fans? It would be insanity (and fans of the page would likely be pretty pissy at Facebook for it).

How To Change Your Facebook Fan Page Name

Method 1: Do-It-Yourself!  Only Works For Pages Under 200 Fans

Find the particular page name in question and under it, select “Edit Page” to enter that particular page’s administrative dashboard.

In the screen shot above, you see the new dashboard and the “Basic Information” tab presenting the “Name” field in an editable fashion.

This is how it will be displayed if your page meets the qualifications to have it’s name changed. If your page is not eligible, the Name field will not be available to you.

Now type the name in the way you would like it to be displayed and select “Save Changes” to change your Facebook Fan Page name!

Method 2: Request A Change Form (Only permitted for fully TOS compliant names & pages, with business documentation and where no confusion of the fans is likely.)  

(5/5/12: The form we had has been replaced by an in-dash form)

Facebook has recently re-introduced their name change request form for pages over 200 fans directly into the admin dashboard.

click on image for larger view

This option is not available to “Public Figures” and certain other categories. You must first change your category and hit save before it will appear. I used “Brands & Products – Products & Services” on both of mine to trigger it. 

Please listen carefully: If your page is not 100% TOS compliant including no modifiers, descriptive words, etc in the existing page name and no unsanctioned contests…. this is VERY high risk. Consider carefully if you want a Facebook staff member having a good long look at your page.

Also, recall that Business pages are only for fully owned brands and it does your business identification paperwork (Taxes, Trademark, LLC, Corp, etc). Recall that we are not authorized to have a page in any name that we do not fully, legally own.

I am seeing about a 50% decline rate for this request form at this time. This is actually reasonably high as it means about 50% of those that are requesting the change are getting approval.  Facebook is mostly declining TOS violations and pages that have changed industry/niche. (Page displayed in example was denied on “confusion” reasons.)

Summary

This is an excellent opportunity for those that need it to make a much needed Facebook page name change.

If you feel this post may benefit others, I’d sincerely appreciate you sharing it via social bookmarking, Google, Facebook, Twitter or your favorite social site!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to stay up to date on what’s new in the industry! Get my newsletter plus great tips, ideas and advice! WordPress and Social Media are changing rapidly – sign up now so you don’t miss a daily beat!

image source: Facebook & my own
republication of post permitted with attribution & link

Confusing To Existing Fans,
They Say…

With the recent (again!) changes to the Facebook Page Name Change options, I submitted two of my pages for consideration.

The page most likely to have been approved was: “Ask Kimberly & Community: Social Media Technical Support” an old page that was one of the first I ever made…. and where I started.

My request was to change the page name to simply “Kimberly Castleberry” so that I might then merge it into my main page.

denied!

click to see full size view

The reply reads:

“Hi Kimberly,

Unfortunately, we cannot approve this Page name change. We have determined the name change you requested may be misleading for the people who like the Page. We apologize for any inconvenience, but this decision is final.
For help using Pages, please visit the Pages section of our Help Center: www.facebook.com/help/pages

Thanks,
Betsy
User Operations
Facebook”

They did not indicate that my documentation (an image of my drivers license with certain data blacked out) was insufficient, only that the conversion would be confusing.

Whether I would have had better luck requestion the conversion be to “Just Ask Kim” is unknown and not indicated in any manner that I can draw conclusions from.

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips for Marketing

PS: I did make a “sweet as can be” reply to Betsy asking for a little additional clarification and providing a little of my own. I did not try to aggressively make my case. Generally they will not reply to an email like this, but I’m crossing my fingers that I can garner a little additional insights for you. I do not expect a “change of heart” but any info helps us all.

This is me making a tutorial graphic… I adore SnagIt Editor (from TechSmith, the Camtasia folks) for this type of work. Available for Mac and PC both.

However, if I just need a super fast screenshot, I simply use the “Snipping Tool” built right into Windows 7 and available under Start ->Accessories -> Snipping Tool. It however lacks the advanced editing tools that SnagIt makes super-duper easy.

The snipping tool is really awesome. In fact it initially made me poo-poo the idea of using SnagIt… but now I find a lot of uses for SnagIt in addition to the Snipping Tool. It’s really the best of all words and lets me be both fast with making stuff yet ability to do nice editing work.

I found SnagIt to be much more suited to my needs in social marketing than alternative (but rated) products such as Jing.

SnagIt also handles video and a lot of other stuff as well (and recently got a nice update), but that’s a topic for another post!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: That’s not an affiliate link. Normally I’d link you to Amazon but I live in one of those states that Amazon has left. However, if you decide to buy, you might inquire if anyone you know is able to get you an Amazon link. Help your friends and mentors out!

Create a Site
Mobile Visitors Appreciate

If you’re building a website that’s designed to be mobile friendly, read this carefully.

Creating a website that’s friendly for mobile website requires thinking through quite a few usability concerns that most people just don’t think about.

While there remains a lot of discussion about whether or not you need a mobile (ready) website, most agree you probably do.

Here are five tips for improving the mobile friendliness of your website.

==> Use Responsive Design & Fluid Widths

Avoid fixed widths like the plague. With so many different devices out there, from the dozens of Android models to the iPhone to the iPad and all the tablet devices out there, trying to create one fixed width to work on all devices simply isn’t realistic.

Instead, try to use fluid widths wherever you can. Fluid widths will automatically adapt to the width of the web browser, making your site look good on any device.

You can make this happen easily in WordPress by starting with a theme that was developed with “mobile responsive design” in mind. Genesis, one of the top two framework themes on the market, has this feature built right in since version 1.8. So does WordPress TwentyEleven that came with your WordPress site.

==> Compress Images

Images hog bandwidth when not adaquately “compressed” for web use. This does not mean making the width/height of the image smaller but rather reducing the file size that has to be downloaded. (Slightly confusing I know but not hard.)

Forcing users to download a lot of data content on their mobile phones is never good when it’s avoidable.

Compressing the file size itself is vitally important to good loading speeds on both PC & mobile devices. (This helps your SEO overall.) While a designer needs to compress the theme images, you can easily compress your in-post images using the WP-SmushIt plugin.

==> Make Buttons at Least 44 Pixels

Most smartphones today use a finger tap to simulate a mouse click. In order to make buttons easy to click on, they should be large enough that someone can press on it without having to zoom in.

A general consensus in the design community is to make buttons designed for smartphones at least 44 pixels wide and 44 pixels tall. This makes them easy enough to click on by any smartphone device.

While some smart phones today do a good job with pinch-zoom, many do not, and even when they do, assuming a visitor is comfortable taking those extra steps is damaging.

==> Minimize Choices

If you’re building a website for a desktop viewer, it might make sense to have a dozen different links in your navigation bar and ten pages of content on the home page.

However, if you’re building a site for mobile devices, it’s best to narrow down choices. Try to have at most five different choices for navigation. Make the main parts of your site easily accessible.

Make sure a link to your full version site is at the bottom of your footer.

If you’re using a separate mobile site (or mobile plugin) instead of a mobile responsive WordPress theme, be sure to simplify your mobile site. Also, pay attention to ensure people can access the full site from the footer, if they desire.

==> Test, Test, Test

Don’t assume that just because your site looks good on an iPhone that it’ll look good on an Android. Don’t assume that because it looks good on a Samsung tablet that it’ll look good on an iPad.

Test your website on as many different devices as you can get your hands on. You’ll likely find that your site looks good on some devices, but doesn’t display properly on some operating systems.

Actively seek out errors and fix them.

To learn more about plugins available for WordPress that can optimize a site (that is not using a mobile responsive theme) for mobile compatibility, click here.

Douglas over at smedio.com shares 7 Don’ts of Mobile Marketing that you might enjoy checking out.

These five mobile marketing tips will help you create websites for mobile devices that look great, no matter what phone or tablet your customer is using.

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image source: WordPress.org

How To Delete
Any WP User
(And Keep The Content)

Whether we want to delete the admin user – or ANY user – WordPress gives us a lot of flexibility and makes it really easy!

Removing the “admin” user account, that is auto-created by many quick installers, is one of the first things WP users can do to increase their site security.

Removing it does not stop us from having a user with administrative privileges – but it DOES stop a hacker from immediately guessing our username!

This post may look a little long, due to me using a lot of screenshots, but the steps to remove the WordPress admin user, are actually really simple. (I just wanted to be sure the process was super clear!)

Steps To Delete the WordPress Admin User

1. Update Admin’s Email Address

First, we need to be signed in as the admin user and give the admin user an email address that is not the one we plan to keep. Two users can not have the same email, so we quickly set this “old” user to a fictitious address. 

Be sure you are signed in as the admin user, then in the upper right corner, hover over the words “Howdy, admin” and in the drop-down select “Edit My Profile”.  In the profile section you can enter a different email address and then click save/update.

(You can either use a totally fake email address or if you are a gmail user like me, add a +1 to the first half of your email address, to create a alternate email address that actually still goes to your real inbox.)

2. Create A New WordPress User

While still signed in as admin, we want to make a new user using our preferred username, password, and gravatar email address and set the “role” to say “administrator” in the drop-down box.

This is a good time to ensure you are using a secure password that you do not use on any of your logins.

3. Now, log out of admin and log back in as your new user.

4. Go to “All Users” and hover over “admin” and select the “delete” options

5. Delete The Admin User

On the delete user page, we need to take great care to ensure these settings are correct.

The listed user that we are deleting needs to say “admin” (next to the #2 arrow)

The check box (next to the #3 arrow) needs to be moved down to “Attribue all posts and links to….”

and the drop down for attribution (next to the #4 arrow) needs to show the username of our new user.

What we are doing here is not only deleting the admin user but making sure that all of the posts, pages, etc that belonged to that user are not sent to the trashcan!

(If you accidently forget to move the box to attribute…. you will usually find most of the deleted posts in the “trash” section of posts and pages.)

And that’s all folks…. no more crummy admin user!

This really is a very easy process and it’s a great first step in learning to “harden” (improve the security of) WordPress. While it is only one of many steps that can be taken, its easy enough for anyone to do!

Fortunately, since WordPress 3.0, most auto-installers no longer create a default admin user and instead prompt you to create a user name for yourself… this was a great step forward for the baseline security of WordPress!

Hope you enjoyed this tip!

Now go do it! And then of course come back and leave me a comment!

~ Kim ~

 Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image source: WordPress & me

Sitemaps For Videos?

Video sitemaps have become a key part of websites using a lot of self-hosted video and provide a way to tell Google about those videos. 

Video sitemaps are most important for sites self-hosting a lot of breaking news or hard to find videos and will generally improve the “findability” of these videos.

While some people disagree, most Pros I have spoken with do not feel that video sitemaps (XML files) are particularly important for those of us hosting most of our videos on YouTube. (The downside of using YouTube for hosting is that YouTube often winds up getting our SEO traffic.)

Before you watch this, let me note that just like your regular sitemap.xml file, there are now plugins available to WordPress.org users to make this a LOT less scary!

English Translation: If you have self hosted videos, providing Google with a video sitemap and schema not only improves their findability, but can often get them to turn up in search results, with a thumbnail, right next to YouTube videos. This can mean a fast way to get on Page 1 of Google at times!

Pay careful attention to the fact that he said you should use both Video Sitemaps AND Schema.org Markup on your site together. 

Learn more about video sitemaps here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?

For WordPress.org users, there are many very snazzy premium plugins that provide a wealth of tools and are likely worth checking out.

However, two plugins surface as notable in the free arena: Google XML Sitemap for Videos (3.5 rating on 40,000 installs) and a multi-featured Gallery plugin called Cool Video Gallery (4.0 rating on 40,000 installs). The first one is probably better for most sites that do not need all the extra features (chances for things to break) of the second.

However, that said, if I were truly serious about self-hosted videos ranking, I’d likely look closely at the extended features available in some of the premium plugins.

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: If all of your videos are on YouTube, you probably don’t need one of these unless you’re pushing a lot of breaking news. I personally do not use one on this site due to leaning heavily on YouTube.

Google Drive
Your Files, Any Time

Introducing the all-new Google Drive. Now access your files, even the big ones, from wherever you are. Share them with whomever you want, and edit them together in real-time. Learn more at http://drive.google.com/start

Your document list is now part of Google Drive. Watch this short video to learn about syncing your stuff with the desktop application, creating and sharing files, new views and simplified navigation, and more.

Google’s entry into the cloud storage space comes belatedly, on the heels of many other services. A lot of fuss is currently being made about the terms of service issues and it remains to see how that will settle out.

While currently absent, Linux support is on the way (to go with Mac, PC, iOS & Android support already). Backupify, the service I use for backing up many of my social accounts (highly recommended), is now capable of backing up Google Docs (to go with their ability to back up many social sites, Gmail, Google Apps and more).

It remains to be seen how well Google can differentiate their services from the leading competition (DropBox). However, the ease of using Google Docs, cross-platform, now makes this a very tempting solution for those frustrated by the challenges of syncing and using Word/Excel etc on mobile devices.

Want to compare cloud storage systems? Ars Technica has a great platform and cost comparison.

While I’m still keeping an eye on the TOS issues, I am certain this will drastically increase my use of Google Docs due to my mobile needs. (I’m also certain that the base level security trumps the huge security holes that DropBox will never patch and allows access to files that should be private.)

Do you use any cloud based file services?

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

Zemanta – A Powerful Free Tool
To Assist Your Blogging!

Did you know there’s a really cool plugin/add-on that can not only improve your SEO and build your brand but also make your life easier as well?

Introducing: Zemanta!

Zemanta, the blogging assistant plugin that you won’t want to miss!

With things having gotten very volatile in the SEO world, it becomes more and more important to pay attention to criteria that we know Google is looking for… and one of those is “relevancy”. 

Fortunately, Zemanta helps with this by giving you a super-duper easy way to see posts that your friends and colleagues have written on a topic… without having to dig through Google search for hours!

As you can see, Zemanta saves me a TON of time!  And, these outbound links are as important for my relationship marketing approach as they are for my SEO so its a win/win from all angles.

Are you using Zemanta? I look forward to your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: Want to learn more about Zemanta? Be sure to check out Ileane’s post on Basic Blog Tips with another great Zemanta walk-through!  She uses Zemanta differently than I do and hers is not a duplicate of this post

image source: Zemanta

Marketing In The Literal 
Here & Now 

Location based marketing is one of the newer trends in marketing. If you run an offline business or a business that tends to do a lot of volume in local markets, using location based marketing can help boost your sales.

Location based social sites have been equally hot and not as hot as originally expected. However, even with only approximately 2% of social site users taking part in them, they still contribute dramatically to the local marketing of many businesses.

==> Review Sites: Yelp, Google Places, Citysearch

Review sites are one of the newest additions in the realm of internet influencers. If you run an offline business, there’s a good chance that someone’s going to use a site like Yelp to check out your reputation before visiting.

Using both paid and unpaid methods of getting your rankings up in these sites is a great investment.

Try to incentivize users of these sites to rank you well by offering gifts and discounts for people who post reviews.

Negotiate with the sites themselves to see if you can pay to promote your listings higher in their search engine.

==> Google Places, Google Local, Facebook Pages

Another place you might want to look is Google Places and Facebook Pages for local businesses.

There are two reasons to pay attention. First, you want your business to appear in Google Maps. When someone searches for “coffee” on their iPhone, you want your coffee shop to pop up.

The other reason is that local Google results often appear higher than organic results. This allows you to rank highly for relevant terms for much less work.

Facebook Pages allow you to provide important information to people interested in visiting your establishment. It also makes it easy for your fans to share your events and promotions.

==> Foursquare

Foursquare is yet another location-based service that uses a unique “check in” mechanism to help incentivize people to frequent a certain location.

If you have a business that people would visit often, then Foursquare is probably a good idea. Places like coffee shops, bars, laundromats, etc. can do really well on Foursquare.

Low frequency physical locations, such as passport shops or real estate agents, probably should give Foursquare a pass.

==> Groupon, LivingSocial and Group Buying Sites

Group buying sites are another possibility to consider.

The most important thing to remember with group buying sites is that they’re very expensive to participate in. Usually you have to give a significant discount, then on top of that give the group buying site a cut.

For example, let’s say your normal monthly Yoga pass costs $150. For the group buying site’s users, you offer a three month package for $60 a month. On top of that, you need to pay the group buying site $25 a sign up.

That means that instead of $150, you’re now working with just $35 to cover your costs with. You won’t make a profit; but you’ll get a customer through your doors.

To use group buying well, you need to know for sure that you can monetize a customer once they’re in your sales funnel.

These are a few of the most common location based marketing tactics. If you have a local business, you almost definitely want to be using reviews and Google Places. Foursquare and Groupon depends on your business model, as detailed above.

~ Kim ~ 
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing 

image source: iconfinder

Escaping the 
Facebook Group Trap!

With overly-generous “friends” it often seems harder to get OUT of a problematic group than it is to get into it in the first place!

(Remember, adding your friends to a Facebook Group auto-adds them to the group with notifications enabled, without their consent… always ask them first!)

Whether you’ve simply changed your mind about a group or a have found yourself auto-added to one fortunately leaving it is simple…. if you know where to look!

Leaving A Facebook Group

click to zoom in

Steps To Leave A Facebook Group

1. Click Facebook
2. Click Groups in your sidebar
3. In the page that opens, select the problematic group
4. Once you have opened the group, in the upper right (down about 2″) you will see a gear icon, click it.
5. The dropdown offers you the “Leave Group” option
6. Click the confirmation leave group button in the popup.

If you found this tip useful please be sure to share it!

Enjoy!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing 

Ever Wondered How
Google Answers Your Search Query?

Have you ever wondered how Google goes about turning all of the sites on the web into a relevant search result when you go to Google.com and type in your search?

Google’s own, Matt Cutts, attempts in a brief 7 minutes, to explain the mechanics of getting you a search result that contains your answer!

Note: This is more of a “how do the mechanics work” rather than a “how do I SEO my site so it performs well” kinda video.

I did note however that this is a newer video and the infamous PR (PageRank) word was used… perhaps dispelling the rumor that it’s being phased out for at least the time being. (However, it is still only one of over 200 signals used which includes everything from backlinks to navigation to site design.)

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: http://www.google.com/about/jobs/

Delving Deep Into
Pinterest  Asset Value
With PinPuff

With the raging interest in Pinterest comes the question of it’s business value… 

While I have no clue where they source the pricing data from, PinPuff is a very unique way to look at voth the worth of your pins and the amount of reach you are achieving. 

PinPuff.com is currently free and dead simple to use. 

Simply visit the site and enter your email address and your pinterest username… and out comes your score!

Not bad for someone that is at this time not yet using the platform aggressively….

(It has a bad habit of showing off my lack of interest and taste in visual design… unless you count cute LOL cats and good food!)

Clicking the here link opens the single page report: 

Now, perhaps the truly neat thing is the ability to spy on the competition!

You will notice that your profile is on a URL like this: 
http://pinpuff.com/user/AskKim

Now, simply replace my ID with the Pinterest user ID of the person you want to check out… and voila!

You have their details at your fingertips! 

(Presumably, this only works for Public non-private Pinterest accounts.)

This is a nice little tool if for no other reason than that it brings your site and board basic metrics into one view for noting in your quarterly business report/eval. 

Enjoy!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

Related Posts: 

* How To Find Your Pinterest Board or User RSS Feed (via Just-Ask-Kim.com)
*  7 Ways to Use Pinterest in Business (via smedio.com)
* Pinterest Marketing Tips for Bloggers (via shoutmeloud.com)
* How to Use Pinterest for Public Relations (via smedio.com)
* 9 Ways Men Can Use @Pinterest (Infographic) (via tech18.com)
* 8 tips for a Pinterest social media resume (via christopherspenn.com)
* The Global Map Of Pinteresting (Infographic) (via tech18.com)

Easily keep Business Posts to Business Folks….
& Family Posts to Family Folk!

 Wish you had more control over who sees your Facebook posts?

Got family and business people and posts together on your profile?

Want to send a post out that only some of your friends can see?

Ready to stop annoying your family with business content?

Ready to learn how you can post on your Facebook wall and have only specific people see (or not see) the post?

If you’ve ever wanted better wall post privacy for your Facebook account, check out this hot tip!

click for larger view

Steps To Control Your Facebook Post Frivacy

1. Make a “Friends” List – separate business & family
2. Use privacy selector
3. Choose Custom
4. Select visibility and / or hide post from any person or list

Now, when you need to post about that thing going on that required a emergency doctors visit, you can share it privately to your family…. while preventing your family from being flooded with business posts.

Facebook now comes with some “smart lists” (which have the colored icons). I don’t like these much as they are autogenerated and change and do not obey many of the rules. I tend to ignore the ones with the colored icons and make my own.

Like it? Love it? Tweet it, Like it, Digg it & leave me a message! I can’t wait to hear the great ideas you guys come up with for using this cool feature!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: When structuring your custom lists, think similar to Google Circles. You want just enough to get by and definitely not too many. Making a dozen lists will make you not use them. I separate out “Near & Dear”, Family, Close collaborators, Fans & All SM Contacts and two or three other lists. Don’t make too many.

Details: Original Publication Date 02/18/10
Post Updated: 04/24/12

Image Source: Facebook & Me

Organize Your Facebook Sidebar
To Quickly Find Your Favorites

Sidebar navigation of Facebook’s News Feed can be tricky with so many things buried under each other.

While tedious on the desktop, this sidebar can be a royal pain in the rump for those browsing from the mobile view.

Fortunately, we can easily set any app, page, list or group as a favorite essentially “pinning” it higher in the sidebar for easy reference.

How To Set A Favorite Destination on Facebook

1) First, click on the upper left Facebook logo to get to the main page of Facebook.

2) Click on the grouping or sub-category of the item you want to mark. For example, in this case I clicked on the word “Pages” to open and display a list of my Facebook Pages.

3) Next to the item you want to favorite, there is a small pencil. Clicking on the pencil opens a small drop-down box that says “Add to Favorites”.  Click that.

4) The item you have added to your favorites will be moved up high on the left sidebar, under any previous favorites.

5) Once an item is marked as a favorite, it will again have a pencil next to it. Opening THAT pencil will give you the option to either rearrange your favorites or remove this favorite.

Hope this helps you navigate Facebook with less hassle!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

Join The YouTube
Partner Program

YouTube’s “Partner Program”, which is their version of AdSense ads, is now open to all video creators.

This will allow you to monetize any of the videos on your YouTube channel and some generate cash off of the views of your videos.

The new version of the program is somewhat different than the former version (Channel Partners) however which may or may still exist.

Here’s a brief introduction to enabling the program settings from Gideon Shalwick.

Now everyone can monetize their videos.

However, unlike the old version of the program, no channel branding is available. This is rather disappointing as that branding is really useful.

Additional Thoughts: 

You might notice that I monetize very few of my videos with ads. It’s probably also telling that Gideon, who generates a lot of views, chose not to monetize this video either. 

Whether he chose not to monetize because he was showing some screen views of YouTube (can’t monetize any content that you do not own) or for the reasons I do of minimizing viewer hassle on any video that is not already viral… is hard to say.

I know a couple video bloggers that make about $20/30 month this way, which adds up but most small-timers will earn far less than that and risk traffic losses if they annoy their readers. 

I *DO* think you should enable the program, so you have it available to turn onto a select video if one DOES go viral. However, for your day to day videos, some careful thought is required.

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: Google/YouTube is also currently offering a $75 voucher to businesses that sign up to run video ads on others videos. (Similar to an AdSense voucher.)

Need A Post?  
Here! Use Mine!

No, no, I’m not off my rocker!

I am in the process of adapting the licensing on my blog to openly encourage re-publication with attribution.

And boy did I raise some questions from the community!

Essentially that means you can help yourself to re-use any post on my blog as long as you credit me, with name and do-follow link to the post title, as the author.

Your Invited To… 

Go ahead, no need to wait, pick up any post you feel your readers may enjoy and publish it on your site. Simply mention me as the author, dofollow link to the original and you’re good to go. Very similar to guest blogging – only reblogging instead. 

This can be a great way to get a relevant piece of high quality content, with no cash-cost, to feed your hungry audience without having to work hard!

Want to include it in your e-book or autoresponder? Guess what, you can do that too! (Still must be cited and linked.)

There’s all sorts of juicy stuff in the archives that your readers likely have not seen even if they follow me.

What You Can Not Do

You can’t break, remove or replace internal links. Editing within the post itself is also not permissible. This would risk my integrity as it would appear that I linked to or wrote something I did not. Makes sense right?

You can not no-follow the attribution link, since that would no longer be a correct giving of credit where it’s due.

You may also need to replace the thumbnail/featured image when it is from a stock source such as 123rf.com or istockphoto.com as those can not be republished per their terms. Screenshots, iconfinder and GPL photos etc can be used however.

What You Might Consider Doing

You can “frame” the content with a paragraph before and after, if you want it to have SEO relevance, but that is not required if you simply are publishing it to give your current readers good content.

This “top and tail” method is known as framing in the SEO world and has been used successfully with republished articles from article directories for a long time. 

(If you use framing, you don’t necessarily need to set the canonical SEO field.)

Why Don’t Others Do This?

I have been asked why more sites do not allow this so let me give a little back story: 

People have avoided this up till now due to some very legitimate fears that used to be a bigger issue. 

Three things are mentally holding people back from this…

(1) I personally risk someone out ranking me with my stuff, not likely but a fear of other people. One site that has been allowed to republish mine for a good while now, every so often, DOES outrank me because of link-building work they do. I’m okay with that – my name and link is in that post! 

(2) If you publish the post in full it will not usually rank highly in SERPs. Many people are so SEO focused they never write posts only for their readers (foolish). If you “frame” the post you improve both the context for the reader and the SEO situation. 

A year ago I was calling this model too dangerous for both parties but now I’m not. I’ve been monitoring the changes for a while and with a couple new “flags” that Google uses to define both “freshness” and “the original post” this is much safer for everyone when done right.

Correctly cited sources are not regarded as duplicate content (as long as they are not multiple copies on the same blog). Correct citation is a method of avoiding the duplicate content penalty. We can also (optionally) use the  canonical field in your SEO settings to ensure Google knows where the original lives. Easy Peasy.

(3) A site that is not producing enough substance to balance the advertising and site structure will get knocked for having “thin” content. An example of a site with thin content might be a jewelry catalog where there is mostly promotion and little true content. This is not a ding for “bad” content or even “republished” content but content that is excessively short or missing.

However, any reader of THIS blog is unlikely to be at a risk of this.

You might be surprised to learn that there are some sites that ONLY republish others full articles and produce no content of their own… and because of their community building efforts and link building efforts they outrank many big sites.  It just has to be done right.

Many of the sites that have been hit by Panda have been as a result a list of faults that your site is unlikely to suffer from: Too little real content with too many ads with too little brand development is always a recipe for trouble. Always.

Is there some gamble in this for me? Sure is. I could be wrong and this could hurt me. I sincerely doubt I’m wrong and my site’s traffic should give you an idea that I usually accurately call my hunches. Even if it’s not a “perfect” SEO move for me, it will build a stronger community, and I’ll take that any day of the week!

I’m a fan of the open source community and to be able to open my content to you, under terms that serve us both, thrills me.

What If You Think I’m Too Crazy – But Still Want To Share?

If you are deeply concerned that simply providing a link to the original will not be enough to keep Google happy, you are certainly welcome to set the Canonical URL field in your WP SEO plugin.

This is not mandatory but would keep Google very happy. However, enabling it will ensure that your copy identifies itself as a copy and flows link juice correctly to the original.

The canonical flag simply points Google down the path to the original article and causes it to essentially overlook the copy.  You don’t have to do this, but if you’re feeling uncomfortable with the risk, this solves it.

What The Future Holds

You’re going to see more of this in the future. It’s already in the cards. 

With Google having figured out how to handle content curation based sites and actively working on how to minimize negative impacts of both resyndication and content theft on the master blog, the doors are opening for this.  

Wikipedia aptly describes reblogging as:

“The mechanism in microblogging which allows users to repost the content of another user’s post with an indication that the content of the repost is a “reblog” from another user. For a number of microblogging and social networking services, reblogging has become a means of both social bookmarking and user commentary…

Reblogging (and the increased attention paid to the indexing and encouragement of reblogging) has become a major feature of many social networking sites and content-hosting services, and it has also become a potent means of secondary content promotion and audience measurement whereby links to external content are syndicated across multiple profiles and the reposts are indexed as a measurement of currency and relevance.

Platforms like Tumblr, which are beginning to dominate, have reblogging as a vital part of their platform. A huge percentage of the posts on Tumblr are reblogged content.

Triberr, the twitter syndication community, has also now enabled (optional) functionality in their plugin to enable re-blogging of a full post. This is the same as Tumblr already offers.

WordPress.com has recently reintroduced their reblogging features.  I’ve done the same semi-manually using “Press This” which is built into WP.org Tools page. (There is a new reblog plugin for WP.org but it depends on iframes so I do not recommend it at this moment.)

The Legal Stuff

Just like other journalists and authors, you don’t need my permission to editorially cite a partial copy.  That is already granted to you by “fair use” laws. I’m granting license however to use a full copy which would usually not be permissible, under certain terms. Rather like a guest post.

Once I figure out how to correctly class this site’s content, it will most likely be listed as Creative Commons, Commercial-Permissible license.  I need to make some adjustments (waivers) to the Non-Derivation clause however to make it work correctly for this use. 

“With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify.”

WrapUp

You can learn more about how Creative Commons is changing the web and why this approach is as much a “heart issue”, from my belief in the free flow of ideas, as it is a head issue for business growth. 

You’re going to see more of this as people realize that content curation and out-linking is working.

Content Curation is here to stay. 

I’ll write more about content curation later because you really need to understand how it is shaping digital media over the next three years.

When you can be the trusted-filter, for your community, that protects them from having to sort through everything out there. You win. Whether you bring them whole posts, snippets or just links, building on them with your trusted advise, you become the go-to. 

This is essentially the model that newspapers use (at least here in the States) where 2 big publishers produce most of the content that smaller, local papers run as articles with a little blurb that says “by Associated Press” or “by Reuters”. (This is also partially the origin of the term syndication among publishers.)

Many people have already taken me up on this and it’s working nicely.

I invite you to do the same.

Be sure to let me know via my contact form if you republish so that I can come tweet it for you!

~ Kimberly Castleberry ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: Googling “Steal this Blog” and “Steal this Post” will reveal that I’m certainly not the first author turning to this practice in one form or another. 

image source: iconfinder

Define the “Original Source” To Protect SEO
Using the Canonical Setting

When ever we utilize a piece of duplicate content – whether on our own site or cross-site – its important to consider what we tell Google about that piece.

If you are reblogging a piece of content, the canonical field is the “SEO correct” way to tell Google that the original lists “over there”.

Depending on what you are doing this may or may not replace the need to include an in post dofollow link.

The WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin (which replaces the older AIO, Platinum and Headspace SEO plugins) makes this super simple.

Simply fill in the Canonical URl field with the URL link to the original copy of the post (regardless of whether it is on your site or someone elses).  Piece of cake!

When republishing the same piece on your own site over and over – such as with a monthly webinar announcement – it’s actually better to also use the “noindex” setting in addition. That tells Google to essentially skip over the piece and in that way only “see” the original in the SERPs.

Sometimes the announcements, schedules, etc that we publish routinely are for our readers… and very confusing to Google. Using canonical and (where appropriate) noindex will help Google understand.

There are other important uses for canonical at a site-wide level, however hopefully this post makes it easy for you to to understand the in-post settings and why they matter.

Canonical, with or without noindex, is your friend in minimizing duplicate content problems (some of which are inherent to WordPress and other CMS systems).

~ Kimberly Castleberry ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image source: me

What is RSS? 
(In English Please??)

You’ve likely heard about RSS or seen the classic orange icon… but sometimes the “what” gets lost in the “how”… 

Here’s a short video that covers what RSS is and why it’s useful!

 ( Thanks to Mitch Mitchell for sharing this with my Google+ stream.)

While I don’t recommend using Internet Explorer (ever), Firefox has built in RSS tools that are similarly user-friendly.  (You need to add an extension to make Chrome preview feeds correctly.)

Hopefully you can see from this how RSS can play a useful roll in keeping you up to date on your topics of interest. 

Nile Flores over at Blondish.net shares some more basic information on RSS that can help you learn how to use it to your advantage. 

This is why so many tools use RSS as their foundation and why there are lots of neat things you can do with feeds from your own site. 

 ~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

PS: One of my favorite uses of RSS feeds is to enter them as sources in my Zemanta browser add-on or WP plugin. Then I use Zemanta to show me posts by blogs I follow on the same topic as mine. That lets me easily link to them. (I don’t use Zemanta’s other tools.) Linking to other blogs and sources is almost as important as interlinking – you need to be doing both!

image source: wikipedia GPL

Making Chrome 
Not Suck At Showing RSS 

Of all the strange things to omit from Chrome, the absence of the RSS “pretty display” generates a lot of confusion. 

Recently, I was asked to suggest a WordPress plugin that would make RSS feeds work in Chrome. Sorry, no can do!

Feeds are actually a Chrome problem not a WP problem…

By default, RSS feeds look yucky in Chrome: 

Fortunately, there’s a really nice extension you can add to Chrome that forces it to display feeds nicely like Firefox does natively. 

“RSS Subscription Extension”: 
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd?hl=en-US

Assuming you want the feeds to not look like code and be easy to subscribe too then you want to check out this 4.5 star extension made by Google for Chrome.

As you can see, it does a nice job of turning that code into human-speak for us to preview before subscribing:

I suppose with the rise of social that RSS is not used quite as much as it used to be. It perhaps makes sense not to include this by default but it does feel odd that it’s lacking. 

The extension is made by Google, for chrome, to enable an elegant preview of RSS feeds. Works like a champ!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image source: rss icon (GPL/wikipedia), screenshots (mine), Google web store property of Google. 

Do We Need To Continue
Building BackLinks?

We’ve been talking a lot about SEO the last couple weeks after 3 major changes to SEO announced the arrival of Google’s plan to “clean house”.

Though we’ve talked quite a bit about aspects surrounding it, a question that continues to be asked is whether backlinks still play a role in SERP (search engine result placement) rankings.

Today, I read a very well-phrased statement, by Oz over at addictivetext.com that not only builds on my theory but makes a fantastic point: 

“Why would Google bother with de-indexing thousands of blogs – if this really was the end of backlinking?

Wouldn’t it be much easier for them {Google} to just change their algorithm and devalue the significance of backlinks?  If they had done this – then all backlinks would have been devalued… not just backlinks from designated blog networks.
 
From my reckoning, the fact that Google went to such pains to deindex blog networks – suggests that backlinks will continue to play a prominent role in Google’s ranking algorithm.”

I would personally add that Google also appears to have tightened down and hit sites that are flowing a lot of comment links to “bad neighborhoods” and even sites they’ve simply deemed spammy (including many affiliate links).  

This is one reason that top bloggers not only carefully moderate comments (if you’re not using GASP Premium you should be) but also break links and remove anchor text from commentators not abiding by the site’s comment policy (which generally states no links to risky neighborhoods)

Commenting on blogs remains, for many (but perhaps arguably not all), an effective method of “gently” building backlinks. Another effective and even more powerful method is guest posting. Using both of these techniques can help provide you with a mix of sites, anchor text and link types (editorial vs comment links) needed to appear “natural” and build rank.

New to the idea of building backlinks and want to learn more? You can start here. Or, you can click here to learn about some of the current trends in link building.

Remember, un-manipulated, links from one site to another’s content is actually a very strong indicator that the linked-to content is worth seeing. Links are the original version of the web’s social share.

What role do you feel backlinks have in SEO today? Do you think their value has gone up or down? What method do you use to build Panda-friendly backlinks for your site?

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image source: 123rf

Using Page Heirarchy
For WordPress Content Management

When using WordPress as a content management system (CMS) it’s important to understand the page hierarchy system for maintaining some sense of sanity.

Oh yeah, and it helps with SEO too… (by adding the parent page keyword path into the child’s URL)

First we want to create a standard page to serve as the parent page. You likely already have a page like this.

Pro Tip: Keep the URL SHORT and keyword rich if required, as it affects the child page URL.

(Each image below is clickable to see a larger view.)

Here you see I’ve created a page named “My Parent Page” with a url of url.com/my-parent-page and published it. Nothing fancy going on here.

Here I’ve created a child page, titled “My Child Page”. Default URL originally url.com/my-child-page

On the right side of the image, note that the Page Attribute section has a option titled “Parent”… and that has been set to “My Parent Page”.

Once the Parent is set (and saved or published), the default URL is changed to url.com/my-parent-page/my-child-page.

This inclusion of the parent page into the child page’s URL structure lets you visually identify where the page belongs and can add important keywords into the child page URL (improving SEO when done right).

Pro Tip: If you do this to already published pages, keep in mind that it will break existing links to that page unless you use a redirect plugin or other 301 setting.

You can also set/change the parent/child relationship from the Quick Edit options:

This is the Quick Edit option for the child page. Note the “Parent” drop down box.

Whether you set the Parent in the Page Editor or in the Quick Edit, the Parent/Child relationship is always easily visible in the Pages listing to help you keep track of these connections.

Once you have your pages organized in this fashion, you may find that going through multiple pages of pages to find the one you need drives you nuts. To improve the management/view of the pages-of-pages I recommend “Admin Collapse SubPages” as a plugin to any WordPress CMS site that is not already plugin heavy.

Combining the use of Parent/Child pages and the Admin Collapse SubPages plugin can help improve the useability and organization of WordPress when used as a CMS.

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

image source: WordPress
screenshots by yours truly

Related Post:

* Quick Tip: Display Excerpts of Child Pages with a Shortcode via wp.tutsplus.com

Delving Deep Into 
Pinterest  Asset Value 
With PinPuff

With the raging interest in Pinterest comes the question of measuring it…

PinReach.com, while similar to PinPuff.com that we discussed earlier, gives you a different view of your Pinterest engagement and influence levels.

Signing in for your free PinReach account reveals a couple tables with interesting data.

Profile influence scoring appears to be on a scale of 100 with 80 being the “typical high”. 

PinReach.com was originally PinClout.com until Klout.com threatened them with legal action so you may find this site listed as its original name in other posts. 

Enjoy!

~ Kim ~
Simple Tech Tips For Marketing

Related Posts: 

* How To Find Your Pinterest Board or User RSS Feed (via Just-Ask-Kim.com)
*  7 Ways to Use Pinterest in Business (via smedio.com)
* Pinterest Marketing Tips for Bloggers (via shoutmeloud.com)
* How to Use Pinterest for Public Relations (via smedio.com)
* 9 Ways Men Can Use @Pinterest (Infographic) (via tech18.com)
* 8 tips for a Pinterest social media resume (via christopherspenn.com)
* The Global Map Of Pinteresting (Infographic) (via tech18.com)