Monitor Your Personal Brand Using Search Engine Alerts

You don’t need an expensive marketing firm, or even a friend who works in marketing, to manage your personal brand online. Some of the most powerful tools for monitoring your brand are the free email alert mechanisms available at your search engine of choice.

Setting Google Alerts. While I’ve been known to egosurf my own name online every once in a while, setting a Google Alert on my name means I don’t have to do it so much. Every time Google finds a web page with my name on it, it emails me. Setting up a Google Alert is simple. Go to your Google account and choose “Alerts.” Type your full name in the Search Terms field. Then choose the type of search. I recommend a comprehensive search because then you’ll receive Google Alerts with results that span online news, blogs and other web sites. You then have the option to set the frequency that you receive Alerts. Finally, you just need to specify the email address that should receive the alert and click “Create Alert.”

Setting Yahoo Alerts. Yahoo Alerts works similarly to Google Alerts. Go to Yahoo Alerts and sign in to your Yahoo user account. Click “Create an Alert” and then choose “Keyword News.” From the Keyword News Alert home page, enter your full name in the “Include” field. Next choose how you want the Yahoo Alerts delivered, and the delivery method (via email, Yahoo Messenger or mobile device). Finally, click “Save Alert.” Read more…

Some of resources: Search Online Marketing, Outsource Internet Marketing

The Future of Search: Social Relevancy Rank

FriendFeed has recently launched a search feature, and so Facebook search must be coming soon.

Real-time Web search (of streams of activities) is a hot topic right now. Everyone, including Google and Microsoft, recognizes the value of using trusted contacts as filters. What was once called social search is now called real-time search, but this time it will really happen. First, it will be applied to streams and then to the Web in general.

What we are about to get is a Social Relevancy Rank. Whenever you search streams of activity, the results will be ordered not chronologically but by how relevant each is to you based on your social graph. That is, people who matter more to you will bubble up. How does this work? Well, there will be a formula, just as there is a formula for Page Rank.

Solution 101: Rank by Friends and People You Follow

Here is an idea so obvious that it is surprising Twitter has not implemented it already: front-load search results with people you follow. When you search for, say, “Wilco” on Twitter today, the results are in the chronological order. That is not really relevant because you do not know who most of these people are. But if instead you could see people you follow, the search results would be much more useful. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

Twittergate: “Most Difficult Part of Web 2.0 Security Is the Human”

The release of Twitter’s internal documents overnight by a hacker is a potent reminder of how much information we store in the cloud and how vulnerable that data is.

Furthermore, it raises questions about Twitter’s security practices, given that the break-in didn’t happen because of a complicated hacking strategy, but because the hacker got the right answers to password reset questions. Twitte co-founder Biz Stone stressed that the attack didn’t compromise any Twitter accounts and was instead a personal hit on an administrative employee’s and Ev Williams’ wife’s accounts. Twitter said it has performed a security audit and has reminded employees of personal security guidelines.

Although Twitter is largely known as a public platform where people communicate openly, it’s also become a substitute for instant messaging or short e-mails with the direct message function. People use direct message, or “DM” for short, to schedule meet-ups in new cities or to solicit answers to questions from followers.

Twitter has also become an important brand management and marketing tool for companies, so a break-in could leave a company open to potentially destructive tweets to customers. In January, this happened to 33 high-profile accounts, including those belonging to Barack Obama and CNN’s Rick Sanchez.

So what can you do to protect yourself? The difficult part of Web 2.0 security isn’t actually the technical side. It’s the human, said David Marcus, director of security, research & communications at security software maker McAfee. Read more…

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A Book and a Network: Inspiration for Personal Branding Success

Personal branding, whether you like the term or not, is something every web worker should consider. Don’t look at it as marketing or packaging yourself, but more as being true to yourself. Micheal Port’s book, “Book Yourself Solid” makes that distinction very well, while the Food Network demonstrates exactly how to make it work for you and your business.
Michael Port’s concept of personal branding starts with his belief that, “When you work with clients you love, you’ll truly enjoy the work you’re doing; you’ll love every minute of it. And when you love every minute of the work you do, you’ll do your best work, which is essential to [booking] yourself solid. Second, because you are your clients; they are an expression and an extension of you.”

The cornerstone of his philosophy is that “the greatest strategy for personal and business development on the planet is bold self-expression,” and many successful personal brands have used this very strategy to rise to the top.

The Food Network is filled with great examples of personal branding success stories using the “bold self-expression” strategy, and while the brands are very unique, they all attract their individual audiences by being exactly one thing — themselves.

Take three of the popular Food Network personal brands: Rachel Ray, Paula Deen and Emeril Lagasse. They each have individual flare and have used that individuality to create tremendous personal success. Read more…

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Extend LinkedIn Into an Online Document Collaboration Platform

While we have covered the social media aspects of LinkedIn in the past, the service is now being extended with third-party applications. Right now, Box.net Files and Huddle WorkSpaces enable you to use LinkedIn as an online document collaboration platform. These free tools are light versions of more full-featured products, but should serve you just fine for one-off collaboration needs.

The potential of LinkedIn for document collaboration may sound hinky to some, but there are some real benefits, including:

* Secure access via the LinkedIn social network of contacts.
* No infrastructure or administrative costs.
* Access documents anywhere via the web, as long as you are a LinkedIn member.

However, there is a flip side, in that that there are basically two types of LinkedIn users — those who log in faithfully on a regular basis, and those who log in just often enough to respond to network invites, and otherwise spend little time on the site. Online document collaboration via LinkedIn is going to work best for organizations where LinkedIn is already part of the corporate culture. In other words, frequent LinkedIn users are going to be the best adopters of these applications.

Both of these applications are accessible from your LinkedIn profile, via the “Featured Applications” section. Read more…

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How One 19-Year Old Is Shaking Up Online Media

Michael van Poppel used to be like a lot of young people, trawling the internet for interesting news about the world. Just like many others have considered doing, he created a place where he could post the most interesting news he finds, as fast as he can.Today he’s one of the most-watched movers and shakers in online news media - and he’s not yet twenty years old.

In September 2007, when seventeen years old and living in the Netherlands, van Poppel decided to launch a news aggregation business called Breaking News Online. Months later, somehow, he came into possession of a full video of an Osama Bin Laden statement before any of the major news outlets had it, and sold it to Reuters.

That was just the first strange chapter in a very strange story leading up to today, when van Poppel announced plans to release a push iPhone app for his fast-growing Breaking News Online network next month. A 19-year old announced that he would be releasing an iPhone app in a month and many people around the world took pause and noticed. How did this all happen? Asking that question illuminates some of the most interesting trends on the web today.

Why BNO is Exciting

Three days after van Poppel sold the Bin Laden tape to Reuters, he said in an interview with Inside Cable News that he’d originally reached out to CNN’s iReport with the tape. They were unresponsive. He then tried to contact a number of other news outlets before connecting with and making a deal with Reuters. Breaking News Online had already launched months earlier, but the experience must have underlined van Poppel’s belief that he could find, select and push out news faster and better than other larger media outlets. The experience probably provided some funds for that vision as well. Read more…

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Web Traffic (or Lack of) May Be a Reason for a Columnist’s Dismissal

The political columnist Dan Froomkin was hired by The Huffington Post last week, two short weeks after being fired by a more traditional Post, the venerable newspaper in Washington.

In his departure from The Washington Post, there may be a lesson for journalists: keep close tabs on Web traffic.

The Washington Post indicated that a slump in visitors to Mr. Froomkin’s well-known Web column, White House Watch, contributed to its decision not to renew his contract in June. The popularity of Mr. Froomkin’s column was tied in part to its consistent critiques of the Bush administration, and he acknowledges that his page views declined after President Obama took office.

Still, the rationale — even if it was masking other reasons for Mr. Froomkin’s departure — surprised some writers who are uncomfortable being judged by their Web traffic. The Washington City Paper, in an analysis of Mr. Froomkin’s departure, called it a historical marker for The Post, “the first time that a major personnel decision has hinged so squarely on Web hits.”

“It’s an unusual public rationale for serious newspaper people, that’s for sure,” said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University.

Mr. Froomkin, a contract employee who worked from home, wrote more than 1,000 columns for The Post’s Web site, beginning in 2004. He filtered the news media’s coverage of Mr. Bush through a critical lens, writing in his farewell column that when he thinks of the Bush years, “I think of the lies. There were so many.” Read more…

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The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default

One of the most anticipated days in the history of social networking site Facebook has finally come: the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user’s approved friends.

Private by default has been a hallmark characteristic of Facebook, as high on the list as the lack of MySpace garishness. It’s been key in making Facebook the biggest social network on earth. Now that’s about to change. Facebook has been very careful to avoid the major backlash that it has seen in the past when making substantial changes to things like privacy settings, but it’s hard to imagine there isn’t going to be a backlash. From a web innovation perspective, the move could lead to some of the most exciting developments we’ve seen yet from the world of social media.

Remember the News Feed?

When Facebook launched its News Feed feature in September 2006, displaying all activity by a user’s friends in a flowing list of updates on the page, the backlash shook the young service to its core. The News Feed is now the central feature of the Facebook user experience. The new public visibility of shared messages is going to change Facebook on that kind of scale. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

Social Media in Germany: 5 Years Behind-Still Lots to Learn

A few days ago, we got a chance to talk about the state of blogging and social media in Germany with Marcel Weiß, the editor of Netzwertig.com - one of Germany’s most popular blogs. In the interview, Weiß told us that Germany is at least five years behind the U.S. when it comes to social media and its adoption by a larger part of society. Blogs are still considered to be suspect by a large part of the German public and have very little influence, and social news sites and aggregators attract very little attention. With regards to Germany’s Internet startup scene, Weiß argues that, with very few exceptions, most companies are also years behind the U.S. and just aren’t innovative enough to compete.

Blogging in Germany: Five Years Behind

Weiß argues that blogging and social media adoption in Germany is far behind similar trends in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Blogs are still considered suspect and have almost no influence over local or national politics. The mainstream media still likes to describe the Internet as a dangerous place, full of malware, porn, and scammers. While regular newspapers in Germany have also started to feel the pressure from the Internet (and every major German paper has a web site), the absence of a successful Craigslist-type site in the country has given the newspapers a longer lease on life than in America.

Unlike the U.S., no political blog has the influence of American sites like DailyKos or Talking Points Memo, though a recent (and misguided) move by German politicians to censor the Internet in Germany in order to combat child pornography led over 130,000 German Internet users to sign a petition against this plan and galvanized the German Internet community in an unprecedented way. It remains to be seen, though, if this sudden rise in Internet activism in Germany will have legs, or if it will just fizzle out quickly. Read more…

Some of resources: CAD Services, Handwriting Experts

A Day With 400 Tweets Starts With Simplicity

Bonnie Smalley has Internet bragging rights: She has been blocked by Twitter for hand-typing too many tweets in an hour. They thought she was a computer program made to spew spam.

Ms. Smalley, it turns out, is a 100 percent human customer service representative for Comcast. She is one of 10 representatives who reach out to customers through social networks, rather than waiting for them to find Comcast’s support site.

Known on Twitter as comcast bonnie, Ms. Smalley reads at least 400 customer tweets on a slow day at her desk in Philadelphia. Amazingly, she replies to all of them, and an additional hundred or more e-mail messages and a few more messages on Facebook, MySpace, Second Life and LinkedIn. On days when Comcast makes an announcement, the volume of everything triples.

How does she do it? Ms. Smalley, 24, has plenty of advice to give, as do other always-on pros and amateurs. Their tips will help you minimize your time and effort while maximizing your social bliss. Read more…

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