Posted by admin on May 16, 2009 in
Business,
Internet,
Software,
technology
You might have seen this in the news lately and it’s really nothing new but FaceBook is under another attack where some group is phishing for passwords. You can read more about it here. When I say this is nothing new I mean that there is always something like this going on. Everyone always asks why anyone would do this but of course its money. I guess most people don’t realize that getting their hands on your FaceBook account might lead them to your bank account especially if you use the same password. There are a variety of other things that these types of attacks are generally after or in the case of computer viruses it’s typically to gain control of your computer.
What can you do about it?
Just play it safe. Don’t click on fishy looking links and never ever give your password to anyone.
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: facebook
Posted by admin on May 16, 2009 in
Business,
Gadgets,
Internet,
Software,
technology Developers have tried a variety of different methods to not only increase usage of their application but also to encourage other people to join. Facebook and others suggest friends, you can find who you went to school with, or search by emails. LinkedIn uses a 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon approach to see who your friends’ friends are and Twitter uses the poison Kool-Aid approach by showing your cult followers. There’s a simple enough explanation as to why –ad revenues of course. But one can quickly see through this thin veil that it is. Now for most people social media isn’t really for making money. Instead it really is a way to stay in contact with friends or find friends you lost way back when. But for those of us trying to capitalize on the popularity of social media to increase traffic to our websites and blogs or just to increase our sphere of influence the number of followers or friends becomes important. Now don’t get me wrong, sheer numbers can be effective but probably not as effective as truly having a group of friends and acquaintances with whom you regularly engage in real conversation. But this is where so many get it wrong when it comes to social networking. They race to have the most friends and followers but quickly forget why these people were your friend to begin with. If you are not providing relevant information or at least something interesting to talk about then you are disengaging. You basically are weakening the structure of your SOI and you want a strong base not a weak one.
Look at two celebrity examples for a minute Ashton and Oprah. I could care less really about either of these people but there is a big difference in how they Twitter. Ashton really talks using Twitter. He talks about something relevant and it’s really him (or at least we think it’s him) talking. Oprah on the other hand just joined Twitter thanks to Ashton and she (or most likely her handlers) doesn’t get it. Look at this recent post over at Tech Crunch analyzing what Oprah has had to say since she joined Twitter. It’s not interesting. Its absolute junk. Sure she got a million people to follow her and probably got millions more to join Twitter but is she engaging her audience? Is she doing anything interesting? That’s a big fat no. If she actually joined in a conversation or even for a moment let people peek into her personal life she might be surprised at the number of followers who actually follow what she has to say!
This is all fine and dandy for celebrities but none of us are famous. We can’t have a one way conversation and make social networking work for us. It has to be a real conversation where we are talking to and engaging the people who follow us. If you dig through Facebook blindly each day trying to add hundreds of new people to be your friend they will never be your friend. They don’t even know you! They are just befriending you simply because it’s a mouse click. There is no energy expended. But you are wasting a lot of energy trying to make friends with people who could probably care less about you. Instead if you actually spent some time each day engaging in conversation you would be strengthening these relationships.
Still think it’s all about sheer numbers?
Ok enter from Twitter stage left Sockington the cat. Yes it’s a cat and it has more followers than any of us could imagine. It’s not a person. It’s probably not even a real cat and yet it has 500,000+ followers! Why? It just goes to show that following people on Twitter works exponentially. Once you break some imaginary barrier the numbers shoot through the roof. Now that’s great to have that many followers. I only have 60,000 people that even live in my city so that would be a big chunk of Wisconsin following me. But unless I could find some way of truly engaging all those people I might as well be a fake cat because it’s not going to get me more business and it’s not going to mean much other than maybe a story about me over at Tech Crunch.
If you can take anything away from the lesson of Sockington, Kutcher or Oprah it’s that of those 3 try to be like Ashton and at least provide something interesting to talk about. Don’t try to race to a million friends instead truly make some friends out there. You might find more meaning in one real friend versus a hundred so called friends.
As to why follower models don’t work? It’s simply plastic fantastic. (Fake)
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: Twitter
Posted by admin on May 16, 2009 in
Business,
Internet If you are at all familiar with the concept of the long tail you can quickly see why blogging is such a powerful tool to drive traffic to your websites. People are searching for longer phrases on Google now more than ever and concentrated keywords completely fail when it comes to this. In fact with blogging you can almost throw out the concept of keyword research because the long tail is so much more effective. There is nothing to using the long tail, you just write naturally and be very descriptive rather than concise. It might not seem like an effective approach because after all the majority of people performing a real estate search use the phrase “your town real estate” or “your town homes for sale” But these words are so targeted by real estate websites that its simply impossible to get a blog post to rank well against these established sites. So that’s why not competing at all and going after niche markets is more effective. The same holds true with PPC advertising. So many people pay big bucks to go after the most highly competitive phrases thinking that will get more traffic. Instead you get a larger bill and maybe some additional traffic.
There was a great post here that shows how using the long tail in your PPC advertising is effective especially if you combine this with a well written landing page. Even a well written blog post could make the perfect landing page if you have a link to your website from the post. Catch their click, send them to a well designed blog post and hopefully they will click through to your website. It makes sense after all this is why landing pages are important; the person clicking on the link is expecting the link to follow through to the subject matter of what they clicked on. If these don’t match your bounce rate goes up (people leave).
Either way this once again proves the effectiveness of blogging especially when it comes to SEO. And just think a blog post won’t cost you a penny whereas a single click can cost you dollars!
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: Internet Advertising
It was only a matter of time before Facebook really started with SMS. I don’t know why there was a perception that somehow only Twitter could have this sort of functionality but really that’s short sighted. Of course Facebook can add this and of course they were going to. You might say they were late to the starting block but they certainly showed up for the race. In a way it could be the tortoise and the hair since Facebook has an enourmous lead on Twitter regardless of the Oprah effect.
Anyways Facebook is adding some SMS functions and it looks good. You can now send text messages as updates and also receive updates to your phone. I am sure that will be popular. If you combine that with “real time” searching Twitter may or may not end up in a world of hurt.
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: facebook
A lot of people have made many comparisons to Twitter and Facebook but really the comparisons being made should be Friendfeed with everyone trying to copy what they do and trying to do it ASAP. Live searching is quickly becoming all the rave and everyone is trying to implement some variation of this. It’s simple really. Real time promises just that, real time. In this day and age seconds are like years and waiting for a slow clumsy search engine like Google to get around and index all the data, well simply put that *^#$ ain’t happenin’! People want to know what’s going on right this very moment whether it is info such as links sent from their friends or whatever it is they want it NOW. That’s why Twitter has become such a prevalent news source. Twitter is just quicker to the punch. It can deliver speed and some great quality in combination with pictures such as what Tweetpic delivers. Video? Twitter can do that!
That’s why it’s interesting to watch the big dogs, that is larger social networks try to incorporate some of these ideas. What might happen is that the more established networks, with even larger internet populations, sort of do an Amish shun on the likes of Twitter. Whether Facebook can actually knock out Twitter remains to be seen but when they do become closer in capabilities it very well might mean the death of someone or something.
You can check out this story on what Facebook is doing to go Live!
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: facebook
Posted by admin on May 5, 2009 in
Business,
Gadgets,
technology I think this application might be something that a lot of people have been looking for. For instance Google Docs is a great service but on its own it’s not that great. It does what it does well but it’s not really a replacement for Word or other Office applications…yet. But a new app promises to add more functionality to both. If I understand how it works correctly you can work on a document, word, excel or PowerPoint at the moment, and then upload these to the cloud to be shared on Google Docs. For me this would be a great way to work between computers. I regularly use 3 computers each day and to have all my files shared between them is very important. I often work on something at the office and if I don’t consciously remember to inter-share the files it can be a pain when I sit down to work on them at home. I think this would go a long way to solving many such problems. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
For now this service is a beta program and you can go here to sign up for it.
I sent my request in yesterday and still no word yet. I am assuming it might take a bit. Sometimes these companies are quick to get invites out and sometimes it takes weeks or months or never. (Shaking my fist at Google Voice!!)
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: Cloud Computing
Posted by admin on May 2, 2009 in
Business,
Gadgets,
Internet,
Mobile,
technology
If you own a website or are at least familiar with the battles than can ensue over domain names then you probably have heard the term squatting. It’s when someone takes a bunch of names and basically sits on them until someone else is forced to pay a pretty penny for the name. It used to be primarily around domain names. As they first hit the internet the more tech savvy or at least the ones who knew there was gold in them their names decided to buy them all up, especially names associated with products or brand names. Twitter being no different has started to see people coughing up to get particular names. Now there is even a place to trade or buy them.
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: Twitter
Posted by admin on May 2, 2009 in
Business
There is a very good article over at Tech Crunch that I think every blogger should read if they are interested in having more readers, not only that there are some great suggestions on how your readers can get more out of your blog and how you can get more out of them. This is a very interesting read with some great ideas here.
Some of the things that stick out to me are of course analytics because without knowing who is reading your blog and what it’s hard to get direction and speaking of direction some other great ideas are to poll your readers and also to get feedback from them in a variety of other ways. Another interesting suggestion is to be a good commenter on other blogs. Why not? If you make valuable comments it only goes to show that you probably can write a pretty good blog as well. This is something that I have always stressed as well. When I first started blogging I only saw the value in potential clients or customers reading what I wrote but I quickly realized that it might be my fellow agents and peers comments that are even more valuable. Why? Because it serves to validate what it is I am saying! If others in my industry agree with what I say then it certainly makes me out to be the pro!
Speaking of asking questions, what do you think of my blog?
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: Blogging
Posted by admin on Apr 28, 2009 in
Business,
Internet,
Mobile,
Software,
technology
We all know how big mobile internet surfing is already and obviously it’s going to be even bigger in the near future. It was only a matter of time before the internet became more mobile as devices were more capable combined with ISP’s expanding coverage areas. Well the dawn of the internet phone is here and its time we fully rub our tired eyes and give it a hug.
Ready for mobile analytics?
If you have a website I can tell you right now the most important thing you can and should be keeping track of is your traffic. Analytics can tell you everything about your visitors and it’s up to you to turn these into conversions. The same goes with mobile phones and until now there wasn’t a way to keep track of what part of your total traffic was mobile. Doesn’t sound like a big deal to you? Fine for now but when everyone is surfing the net from their car while they drive around looking at houses I will make sure they know they can go to my website.
Anyways Tech Crunch just released a story about a new company that does mobile phone analytics. It’s easy to install on your website but also works in the Active Rain blogs because it’s not Java Script.
There are 500 free invites. I don’t know how many are left but you can ask for more.
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: Mobile Analytics
Posted by admin on Apr 25, 2009 in
Business,
Software,
technology Of all the computer software and applications that I use Dropbox stands out for me. It solves a lot of little headaches when it comes to storage and is so easy to use. Instead of having to transfer files onto a flash drive or burn a cd or however it is you traditionally moved data this thing solves every problem. I have it installed on my home pc, my office pc and my laptop. All I have to do is drop whatever files I want to share between my computers into the box that sits conveniently in the tray. This thing seriously made so many headaches go away. It’s great to see that 1 million people are now using the service because I know the development team put in a lot of work to make this happen. This isn’t a shameless plug instead this is something that I use on a regular basis and I am happy to tell everyone about it.
If you want to sign up for the service and see what it’s all about just click here.
I think you get extra storage if you follow that link as well. I get a bonus for the referral too but I actually have plenty of space. (Although a little more never hurts) Anyways I just thought I would share because I know this is an app that you might not have thought existed and once you try it you just kick yourself wishing you had it 15 years ago.
https://www.getdropbox.com/help
Looking for Eau Claire Homes For Sale?
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
(In case you do not agree with something I said or feel that my blog or my beliefs could be construed as libelous I hereby declare that my entire blog is meant as a joke. I consider myself to be a comedian and everything I say or have said should be considered comedy. I want nothing I say to be taken seriously and if you do take it seriously take a break. If you do not think what I said is funny then that is your opinion. But for anyone who wants to sue me everything I said or say is meant purely as satire.The only thing that is not a joke is this disclaimer.)
Tags: Dropbox
