Jarid's Log

Top 25 Twitter Lists and more

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 05:23:00 +0000

Our monthly update of the top 25 lists by followers and favorite lists on Twitter. Updated 2/05.

Favorites
Autism Community by Jarid Brown
The Hope Institute Family by Jarid Brown
Chicago Follow Back by JobsforChicago
Charity by Christy Bella Joiner

75,645 - Twitter Team by Twitter

25,683 followers - TopBrasil-helphaiti by Rafael C. Define

6,388 followers - Mashable by Pete Cashmore

5,405 followers - Haiti by CNN Breaking News

4,933 followers - Most Influential In Tech by Robert Scoble

4,178 followers - Tech News Brands by Robert Scoble

3,585 followers - Social Media by Pete Cashmore

2,807 followers - Design Links by Roger Byrne

2,535 followers - Tech News People by Robert Scoble

2,252 followers - Top 50 Funny by Favstar.fm

2,229 followers - Best of Photography by Michael Zhang

2,105 followers - Haiti by TIME.com

2,092 followers - Founders by Robert Scoble

1,916 followers - Creatives To Watch by Behance

1,869 followers - Linkers by Patrick LaForge

1,861 followers - Haiti Earthquake by The New York Times

1,819 followers - venture_capitalists by Robert Scoble

1,805 followers - Marketing by Pete Cashmore

1,720 followers - Top Web Designers by carsonified

1,621 followers - Media by Pete Cashmore

1,594 followers - Staff by The New York Times

1,566 followers - Weapons for Entrepreneurs by Robert Scoble

1,510 followers - Top 500 Follow All Back by Anthony Stevens

1,445 followers - Iphone by Robert Scoble

1,404 followers - Tech by Pete Cashmore

10 most popular WordPress themes 02/10

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:55:00 +0000

The ten most popular WordPress Themes as of February 2010.

Arjuna X

Theme homepage

This elegant theme is translation ready, SEO focused, IE6-8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera compatibility, support for threaded comments, four widget bars, flexible sidebar, and more. It can be customized via the admin panel.

Pixel by Sam007

Theme Homepage

Dark WP theme with 2-3 column layout, dropdown categories menu, multiple widget-ready placement and feedburner email form integrated, easy to customize.

Atahualpa by bytesforall

Theme Homepage

1-5 columns, fluid or fixed width, rotating header images and 2 dozen option pages. Support and tutorials available.

Mystique by digitalnature

Theme homepage

Feature-packed theme with a solid design, built-in widgets and a intuitive theme settings interface.

Suffusion by sayontan

Theme Homepage

Suffusion is a lightweight theme with a power-packed set of options. Its focus is on elegance and simple looks. It has 5 widget areas that support one-column, two-column and three-column fixed-width formats, 16 pre-defined color schemes (green, red, orange, purple, 2 shades of blue and 2 shades of gray, each on light and dark backgrounds), a customizable multi-level drop-down menu for both pages and categories, inbuilt support for featured posts, a customizable tabbed sidebar, inbuilt Twitter support, threaded comments, translation support (French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Catalan, Danish and Swedish translations available) and customizable excerpts. The theme has been tested on Firefox (2.0+), Safari (3.0+), Chrome (2.0), IE (6.0+) and Opera (8.0+). A dedicated support forum is available

Lightword by Andreiluca

Theme Homepage

Simply clever theme with two columns, right-sidebar, fixed-width, widget-ready and threaded comments. Compatible with Wordpress 2.8, valid XHTML & CSS.

Piano Black by Mono-Lab

Theme Homepage

This theme supports widget, threaded-comments, theme-options,and translation is ready. Also including page-navigation and multi level dropdown menu.

Constructor by Antonshevchuk

Theme Homepage

Many-in-one theme (six layouts, configured colors, fonts and slideshow, widget ready). Build your own theme on settings page.

Comment Central

Theme Homepage

High quality Wordpress theme. Colorful, grunge,and stylish theme. two columns, left sidebar dropdown menu and widget-ready.

Monochrome by Mono-Lab

Theme Homepage

This theme supports widget, threaded-comments, theme-options,and translation is ready. Also including page-navigation and multi level dropdown menu.

10 Ways to search Twitter and identify trends

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:21:00 +0000

Whether you an organization monitoring the internet to identify positive and negative feedback about your service, a marketer seeking to better identify keywords and targetted trends, or an individual seeking interesting content, finding an effective or fun-based Twitter search agent is essential. Naturally, Twitter offers an inhouse search engine, but users may find another search service that they simply like better or provides more relevant search results. In order to assist you, I have added 10 Twitter search sites for you to explore.

Twitter Search

Twitter's in-house search engine. A great resource, but often underutilized outside of the marketing community.

Twitscoop

A Twitter interface that allows you to receive & send tweets, find new friends without ever reloading your page, preview twitpics, and has a search interface that: allows saved searches, background searches through a multi-tab system, provide a trend cloud on the interface and search graphs.

Tweetmeme

The home of the famous Retweet Buttong tracks and compiles the latest Stories on Twitter; allowing you to break down trends, latest tweets by category and search keywords.

Trendistic (by Flaptor)

A keyword and trend based search tool that breaks down tweets by day.

Tweet Scan

Search by keywords and users. Also provides a paid service that allows email alerts of searches, tracking and time-based searches.

Twitterment

Search Twitter users, keywords and topics.

Twitturly

Find out the most talked about stories on Twitter, tracked and ranked.

Twistori - Fun Engine

Provides a running feed of how Twitter users feel. What they love, hate, think, believe, etc...

GoodBadMe - Fun Engine

A community based engine tracking good and bad deeds through hashtags.

Favotter

A specialty engine that tracks favorite tweets allowing you to track favorite trends and search by user.

5 Twitter directories for organizations and individuals

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:32:00 +0000

A listing of 5 Twitter directories that every organization should utilize to help expand reach.

Twellow

A Twitter directory sorted by occupation. Users can edit a comprehensive profile including extended bio and links to other social networking profiles.

My Twellow Profile

Just Tweet It

A categorized Twitter directory utilizing a wordpress platform. Easy to use and allows short description with html.

One of my listings

Twubble

A twitter tool that finds people who are compatible with your profile and recommends new people to follow.

Twitdir

Search for words in usernames, locations or descriptions. Make sure to add your username.

My profile on Twitdir

Wefollow

A directory allowing users to search via categories or tags that you define when adding profile.

One of my listings on WeFollow

Flipping The Funnel: Timeless advice from Seth Godin

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:28:00 +0000

Years ago, Seth Godin published a short ebook via his blog entitled "Flipping the Funnel". Godin's words of wisdom came back to me this week after I experienced the harsh realities of what occurs when social marketing brainstorming collides with the human-propensity to fight change and avoid the slightest risk or failure.

By nature, we have a propensity to maintain a high level of comfort and continue to operate in established patterns. However, in terms of social marketing, online marketing and the utilization of social media, no organization can afford to maintain the "status-quo". Electronic communications and marketing weapons are continuously evolving and those organizations that take a "wait-and-see" approach will consistently find
themselves behind the "rest of the pack". Nowhere is this more apparent than within political campaigns and non-profit organizations which are often unwilling or unable to make rapid decisions or delve in the unknown.

During the Presidential campaign of 2008, President Obama harnessed the power of social marketing by breaking this pattern of entrenched territorialism and risking his campaign upon the idea that social marketing could generate votes and dollars. Regardless of your political ideology, the President effectively "Flipped the Funnel" and as a result, created a fundraising and volunteer machine that was previously unheard of. The success of President Obama's 2008 campaign led to a new generation of companies, politicians and non-profits attempting to harness the power of the online community. Unfortunately, many of these companies will fail because of a lack of patience, lack of decision making, failure to take inconsequential risks and failure to truly understand how to "Flip the Funnel".

Read Godin's Flipping the Funnel absolutely free below (there are three versions)

Flipping the Funnel for nonprofits
Flipping the Funnel for politics
Flipping the Funnel for businesses/individuals

December reader offer - free Web Wholesaler subscription

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 14:10:00 +0000

Once or twice per month, I highlight for my readers a completely free magazine, publication or white paper that will appeal to various segments of my readers. These publications are completely free, require no credit card or bill me later sign-up. The only requirement is that the publisher asks a few questions to assure that their publication relates to your profession or business.

Web Wholesaler is a monthly publication offering the latest news and resources for internet retailers, store owners, wholesalers and marketers. The publication brings you news on the latest products, merchandise sources, ideas and statistics on what is selling online NOW. In addition, Web Wholesaler brings you the latest news and information on industry trends, e-business growth and management strategies. If you are engaged in online purchasing, selling or marketing, this publication offers sound information to help you increase your revenue.

Start the year out right and get your free subscription to Web Wholesaler.

10 Most popular Wordpress Themes 12/09

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 13:31:00 +0000

The ten most popular WordPress Themes as of December 2009.

Mystique by digitalnature

Theme homepage

Feature-packed theme with a solid design, built-in widgets and a intuitive theme settings interface.

Pixel by Sam007

Theme Homepage

Dark WP theme with 2-3 column layout, dropdown categories menu, multiple widget-ready placement and feedburner email form integrated, easy to customize.

Atahualpa by bytesforall

Theme Homepage

1-5 columns, fluid or fixed width, rotating header images and 2 dozen option pages. Support and tutorials available.

Piano Black by Mono-Lab

Theme Homepage

This theme supports widget, threaded-comments, theme-options,and translation is ready. Also including page-navigation and multi level dropdown menu.

Arclite by digitalnature

Theme Homepage

Simple but elegant theme with lots of theme options.

Constructor by Antonshevchuk

Theme Homepage

Many-in-one theme (six layouts, configured colors, fonts and slideshow, widget ready). Build your own theme on settings page.

Inanis Glass by inanis

Theme Homepage

Glass-like theme for WP 2.6+. 2 col. fixed w/right sidebar, widget & multi-language ready, 7 reader selectable themes saved by cookie, and default sub-theme is admin selectable. Admin selectable picture.

Monochrome by Mono-Lab

Theme Homepage

This theme supports widget, threaded-comments, theme-options,and translation is ready. Also including page-navigation and multi level dropdown menu.

Lightword by Andreiluca

Theme Homepage

Simply clever theme with two columns, right-sidebar, fixed-width, widget-ready and threaded comments. Compatible with Wordpress 2.8, valid XHTML & CSS.

Thematic by iandstewart

Theme homepage

SEO-ready theme, Thematic is a highly extensible, WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, drop-down menus, grid-based layout samples, plugin integration, shortcodes for your footer, & a whole lot more. Perfect for any blog and the starting point for theme development.

What guaranteed Christmas delivery teaches us

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:37:00 +0000

A comprehensive social marketing and should not only aim to promote your organization's services and products, but should also be utilized to monitor negative feedback and improve areas of concern. As an organization or individual utilizing a social marketing strategy, you should first and foremost be ready to carry-through with whatever promises you commit too.

During the holiday season, nearly every retailer makes one promise to the general public: "Guaranteed Christmas Delivery". I've always been skeptical of such promises for two reasons. First, how do such
retailers assure that a third-party (i.e. UPS, FedEx or USPS) will be able to deliver your order without delay? Secondly, what do I, as the consumer, receive if that guarantee is not met?

Last year, I placed two late orders for gifts from online retailers. The first package arrived on several days before Christmas, just as expected. However, the second order seemed to be moving at a snail's pace as it traversed the nation. Two days before Christmas, I was concerned and naturally logged onto the retailer's website with one question in mind: What do I receive if the package does not arrive on time? After an hour of wading through the large retailer's website, I could not find an answer. Simply put, this major retailer's guarantee was nothing more than an empty promise.

The package did arrive on Christmas Eve, but I was reminded of the valuable lesson about the potential damage that an empty promise creates. This year, as I made a late purchase, I did not even visit that retailer's website; they had lost my trust during the holiday season.

Yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook that she had ordered a gift from another major retailer, with guaranteed Christmas delivery. After a week of waiting, she learned that not only would the gift not arrive before Christmas, but that the product would not even be shipped for 2-3 weeks. Naturally, she contacted the company; after all, the guaranteed delivery. Upon reaching customer service, they informed her that they could not cancel the transaction; she would still be charged and would have to return the item when it arrived in 2-3 weeks. This absurd experience teaches us the importance of insuring that corporate policy matches marketing policy.

My friend posted about her bad experience, her 200-300 friends read the post, dozens commented and this company has certainly lost future business. Now imagine if just 100 individuals had similar experiences; that would amount to 20-30 thousand negative perceptions of your company. What if 1,000 people posted similar negative feedback, imagine the damage that could occur. Social marketing is a blessing to companies that focus upon service and maintain a positive perception; however, companies that utilize Social Marketing to make empty promises, best be prepared when the social marketing monster turns against them.

Adding & displaying documents, powerpoints and pdf to your website.

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:36:00 +0000

Whether you are a small organization carrying a minimum amount of server space, a blogger or a cost-conscious entrepreneur, document management is often a challenge. Documents create a specific challenge for several reasons:

Server capacity - Documents, especially pdf files can take up a large amount of storage capacity. If you are a smaller organization, you may not have adequate server space to support the long-range
storage of your documents. As a result you may find yourself forced to constantly monitor and delete what documents you have stored. Additionally, if you are using a free hosting solution as a blogger or individual entrepreneur you may not have document hosting capabilities at all.
Upload capacity - Many organizations, including mid-sized companies often have maximum-sized downloads in order to control costs. 2mb is the typical maximum which creates a particular challenge when wanting to add large pdf files to your site.
Security - Although free hosting is available on many sites such as google, security concerns may prohibit use of such sites within an organization.

In the past I have used numerous free hosts, such as Google Sites or Google Pages (now Google Sites), to assist in storing and hosting large documents. However, as a consumer, I have always had one problem with internet downloads: I like to know exactly what I am downloading. There is nothing more frustrating than having to download 3 or 4 different documents from a single site to locate a single page I was looking initially looking for. However, one document handling site provides a free solution that I absolutely love.

SlideShare allows you to upload and share Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and PDF files online for free. The business media site offers an incredible solution for the small organization or individual entrepreneur. SlideShare offers a large storage capacity, integration with social networking, a built in community for promotion, and customization of presentations. Unlike other platforms, the site offers outstanding privacy controls for free and enhanced services.

More importantly, is the embed option. Unlike free hosting solutions, Slideshare converts your document into a viewable, downloadable and printable slideshow. As a result, you have the option of embedding the document on your website and allowing visitors to view the document prior to downloading or printing. As a business, Slideshare offers services that are currently unmatched. As a consumer, Slideshare offers the ability to view and locate the proper document without having to guess what you are downloading.

So Magazine Article Dec 2009

View more documents from The Hope Institute .

The Techno-geek challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:52:00 +0000

Unfortunately many of us suffer under the delusion that the more technologically advanced our website or blog is, the greater our following will become. We are lured into a belief that flash widgets, java implementation and other fancies somehow create greater readership. Unfortunately, as you, I, and our friends fall prey to this belief, we often become so wrapped up in website design and widgetry that we overlook our core purpose and simply forget that sometimes simpler is better.

Technology, especially in website design, can offer an aesthetic benefit, but at the same time can damage the navigability and user-friendliness of our sites. Such an over-focus on technology, ultimately becomes self-defeating and creates frustration.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of internet news. Take for instance Foxnews.com and CNN.com. Both sites employ the latest technology and go to great lengths to be more attractive to visitors. Although the sites are great for finding breaking news and interactivity, have you ever tried to locate a story that is a week old? or 2, or 3 weeks old? It's nearly impossible, especially if the particular story is a "hot one". If you are looking for a particular quote or fact that was quoted within an older story, good luck. Likewise, politically-driven news sources such HuffingtonPost.com have subscribed to this same techno-heavy, breaking news format; always focusing on that moments news and overlooking the basic need for easy navigation and information location.

On the other hand, one politically-driven news site has remained nearly unchanged for the past decade. The drudgereport.com remains a breaking news source, hot-linking to msm-articles, while maintaining the same format and appearance since its inception. You would think that in today's techno-heavy society that such a format would be unattractive and that users would have long-ago abandoned use of such an unaesthetically pleasing site. But Matt Drudge, unlike the techno-driven websites, has remained focused on his mission and audience. He has created a format that is simple to use, works across every connection speed, is easy to navigate and search, and remains focused on its core mission.

In the end, all four of these sites are very highly rated with even more similar reach. The primary difference, however, is that the drudgereport.com maintains its reach at a much lower cost, meaning a greater income and more resources focusing on news discovery, rather than technology breakdowns.

As a marketer, or simply a for-fun blogger, remember to maintain focus on your core purpose and audience. You don't have to be a techno-geek to be successful online. Just ask the 7 billion users who visit the drudgereport.com every year.

Can you be friends with the wrong people?

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:40:00 +0000

Every organization must develop a social marketing strategy that works for them. Choosing the platforms and tools utilize should be based upon your own organizational objectives, resources and needs. There is no cookie cutter plan that works for all organizations. However, it is safe to assume that most organizations will attempt to utilize both Facebook and Twitter.

Unfortunately, most organizations and individuals do not understand that different fan/friend/follower rules should be
utilized when working with these platforms. Facebook is a much more intimate platform than Twitter; on Facebook you want to choose your Profile friends carefully and utilize privacy setting options to control what you share. On Facebook pages, most organizations will accept any followers, although it might be wise to monitor who is following (every organization has disgruntled former employees). You should not however apply your more restrictive rules of Facebook to Twitter. Twitter is a less intimate platform which has evolved away from Facebook's reach-oriented platform. As such privacy issues are not as prevalent and followers are a necessity if you want your tweets heard.

Recently I warned one organization that I was assisting that they should either turn off their notifications or be prepared for an onslaught of new Twitter followers. I had taken temporary charge of their Twitter account with 15 followers and within 1 day had increased their followers to more than 300. Within 1 week, we were over 2,000 followers. Now, the followers they had were a combination of industry-related followers, locally-based tweeters and general audience (including marketers).

An individual with the organization asked me: Do you think we are becoming friends with the right people (alluding to a particular group of politically vocal individuals)?

I replied: "Welcome to Twitter, if you want your voice heard, you better be prepared accept and follow back any follower. It has evoleved into a form of saturation marketing; if you want to reach any audience then you must be prepared to actively grow the account."

On Twitter, there are no "wrong people", the only poor audience is one that never retweets, mentions, shares or reciprocates. There is software which can assist with identifying and purging those individuals.

Diary - First Step toward an outreach plan and marketing review

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:29:00 +0000

The final week of October presented a welcome break from the event planning of the last 2 weeks; I would finally have an opportunity to begin a review of our traffic, marketing processes and online presence. In terms of the National Meeting we were hosting and promoting, I advised our CCO that we should relax our social media push, share content from others and review our efforts to date. Although our priority was increasing awareness and attendance of the event, we had to protect against the creating a perception of over-advertising and frightening away our base of support. Although we continued to monitor and plan internally, I was given an opportunity to begin my review.

Looking in on an organization from the outside provides a valuable perspective in terms of launching an online
outreach campaign. I was able to act as a member of the online community seeking information on the services we offered. As such, I launched an effort to determine our search engine ranking, keyword and tag ranking, links flowing in and review of our traffic. To my surprise, our organization and centers were often buried in the search results. In addition, I started to map out our online presence including websites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other profiles.

Our Online Map
Primary Website: The Hope Institute for Children and Families

Center Sites:

TAP Service Network

The Hope Institute Learning Academy

Facebook:

Twitter:

Although an online organizational presence had been established, no cohesive marketing plan existed that includes consistent engagement, online relationship development and the integration of social marketing into our Foundation's fundraising platform. We had a presence, but simply lacked the manpower necessary to foster a social marketing strategy. That was where I entered.

I had assumed, when I took my position that I would be able to focus directly on the creation of engaging content and expanding our base of support. However, I found that our online presence had neither the search engine ranking nor were our websites interconnected. Simply put, our centers were difficult to find online, seldom connected to each other, and there were just too many organizational profiles.

As part of the development of a social marketing strategy, the first step was to assure that our current websites were both functioning (technical) and functional (design layout). A comprehensive, page-by-page review determined that our website vendor had rushed to go live with our websites leaving a legacy of dead links and errors in coding. Pictures were not displayed, web pages were riddled with dead links, menus were ordered backwards, and a host of other issues were outlined. Knowing the nature of many web developers, I outlined the most critical issues and started to focus on those.

With an action plan for repairing and my initial thoughts outlined, I focused on our FB and Twitter presence. Everywhere I turned on FB, I seemed to find new pages or groups of fans tied to our centers. As I added up the numbers I quickly realized we seemed to have 7-9 pages and groups scattered throughout FB and 4 Twitter accounts. In terms of online marketing, that is simply too much (without appropriate staffing and plan). I quickly moved toward abandoning the FB groups. I did not delete them, but rather posted a direct link with a message to group members to move to our FB pages. I would monitor these groups periodically to assure that my redirect post was the top message. In terms of our remaining four pages, we would begin implementation of plans to develop each page individually, increasing fans and followers while developing a manageable content strategy.

The good news is that I now had a better understanding of the entire online outreach platform; the bad news, however, was that it appeared that an aggressive upfront marketing strategy would take a backseat while we worked to assure that our online presence was both functioning and functional.

Will Facebook Eat Your Children?

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:19:00 +0000

Yes...Facebook has once again changed privacy controls, added the live feed and will soon implement changes to its fans pages...change happens and Facebook is certainly no exception. Naturally, a large segment of the Facebook community is once again up in arms, complaining about these changes. No statement sums up this sentiment better than the status a friend posted yesterday.

REPOST!! URGENT FACEBOOK UPDATE: As of today, Facebook staff will be allowed to eat your children and pets. To turn this option off, go to settings, then privacy, then meals. Click the top two boxes to prevent the employees of Facebook from eating your beloved children and pets. Copy and post.

Change is inevitable and despite all of our efforts we must accept, adapt, move forward and pave a path
toward the future. Remember last March, when Facebook altered their news feed and did away with the live feed. The Facebook community was livid, groups sprung up to revive the live feed, restore Facebook to its old platform and thousands closed their accounts. Yet, Facebook survived...millions of new users joined the ranks and the rest of us adapted. But here we are 6 months later, arming ourselves with pitchforks and joined by page administrators fearful of the upcoming changes to fan pages.

Settle down...change is not always a bad thing.

Facebook gained popularity due to its privacy controls. Unlike that other major network, it gave us control over who could search for us, what information we shared and who could contact us. The Facebook comunity has grown by leaps and bounds, leading to new concerns over privacy. As a result, FB is adapting to encourage sharing while maintaining control over privacy. Although concerns over their default settings have risen, the new privacy interface allows the same level of privacy as before with additional benefits. For instance, we can now control which friends see certain activity and posts. Naturally, there are growing pains, but ultimately we will adapt and six months from now we will have forgotten those changes.

The bottom line is that Facebook will not eat your children...or pets...or even your beloved laptop. It's simply progressing as we all must. Facebook will continue to change in the future with a change in tab width and the elimination of the boxes tab. Someday they may go too far; and when they do, another social network will take their place. But until then, fear not...because no matter what happens, FACEBOOK WILL NOT EAT YOUR CHILDREN.

Facebook Changes Everyone Should Read About

Changes to Facebook profiles, fan pages and applications

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:15:00 +0000

At the end of October, Facebook rolled out a new roadmap for profiles and fan pages. The uproar among the public has been relatively limited to privacy concerns, but the roadmap also raised the eyebrow of the page administrator and developer community. Throughout the next year, FB will implement new policies for everything from tab width to application bookmarking. To help those engaged in social marketing we have outlined a few changes which every business or page administrator should be aware of.

Email Addresses

Why not start with the best news for page administrators. According to FB, they will soon roll out an option
that will allow Facebook page administrators and applications to ask for and collect the email addresses of their fans and users. For the business and non-profit community, this option will create new opportunities to expand your supporter communications. The new option will be rolled out in mid-January and according to Facebook:

We're excited to announce that you will soon have the ability to ask users for their primary Facebook email addresses, providing you with a direct channel to communicate with your users. This will also serve as a replacement for application-to-user notifications. (We think that Counters and the new News functionality will serve as a better replacement for user-to-user notifications.)

Notifications

With the addition of e-mail address capture comes changes to application notification. According to FB:

We're removing application-to-user notifications and user-to-user notifications. Instead, we encourage you to use other channels to communicate directly with your users, and to enable them to communicate with each other about your application

According to Facebook the notification changes will occur "approximately 30 days after you are able to start requesting a user's email address. (Latest estimate: Early 2010)

Updates and Stream
Facebook will allow pages and applications to send targeted updates as well as posting stories to the stream.

Application News
Facebook will roll out an application news platform allowing you to communicate with users while they are exploring the application dashboard. The news option will also have a per-user targeting option.
Boxes Tab & Profile Boxes

Early in 2010, Facebook will eliminate profile boxes, application info sections and the Boxes tab from user profiles. This move will certainly anger the overall FB community and presents a challenge to developers whose only outlet of free profile advertisement will be an application tab (since many users simply don't like cluttering their profile tabs).

The removal of profile boxes and the boxes tab also presents a design and navigation challenge to page administrators and developers. For instance, I utilize a profile box on many pages I developed to create an index of links to organization websites and other social media outlets. Since many visitors to a page only scan the Wall, it will present a definitive design challenge.

Facebook has stated they are researching additional methods of page and application integration into fan profiles, but it is likely that the planned "early 2010" rollout will occur before an alternative is developed.

Profile and Page Tabs

According to FB:

Application tabs will be the only way to integrate applications into profiles and Pages. Application tabs will shrink from 760 pixels wide (today) to 520* pixels wide to accommodate a slightly revised design. Boxes, info sections, and the Boxes tab will be removed in the near future.

News feed and Stream

In the past all content shared by a friend or page appeared in the stream by default. However, the growing popularity of pages and abusive posting by some page administrators has led to changes in how pages appear in the streams of fans. Many fans have hidden page posts and the changes are directly meant to free up bandwidth while assuring that pages with meaningful content continue to be viewed in the stream. Facebook has implemented a new algorithm that determines what appears for each user, meaning that stream exposure is no longer guaranteed.

Exposure on fan streams will be based upon how many people like your posts, how many fans share your content, how many fans visit your page and which pages fans interact with frequently. If users want to see all page updates they will need to click on the Pages option on their left hand filter.

Why?

The changes Facebook is implementing over the next year are a direct result of ad revenue and server capacity. The changes much of the development community upset, but for now we must prepare for these changes and adapt to these changes.

Why small business rules social marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:35:00 +0000

The most common question raised by small businesses, non-profits and individual entrepreneurs when considering implementing a social marketing strategy pertains to whether such a strategy can produce measurable results in a world dominated by larger organizations with greater resources. My response to such questions is always the same, highlighting three main points:

Entrepreneurial and organizational success in social marketing should not be based upon a comparison of to larger organizations unless such comparisons factor in economies of scale.
Regardless of the size of an organization, all companies and individuals must start from the same point in terms of online marketing and social media. That starting point is with nothing.
Smaller organizations and individual entrepreneurs have three advantages that are rarely found or demonstrated within larger organizations. Such traits have proven to give smaller organizations a greater level of success and production when engaging in social marketing. Those three traits are listed below.

Patience
Imagine working for a company with 5,000 employees and approaching the CEO with a message that they must be patient when implementing a social marketing plan. Your plea is likely to fall upon deaf ears as a century of corporate culture and shareholder reports has created a mentality that any marketing campaign must produce results based upon a benchmark system. The larger the company, the less patience exists within the hierarchy of that company. Yet, social marketers will all agree that patience is an important component of social marketing. Smaller organizations tend to practice a greater level of patience and more likely to adjust strategies, rather than abandoning them, when objectives are not reached or exceeded.

Persistence
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Nowhere are those words more applicable than in the world of social marketing. Social media and online platforms as constantly evolving and the marketing strategies that are effective today may be obsolete a few years from now. Small organizations better understand that they greatest successes are often built upon earlier failure. Yet, larger companies possess neither the patience nor the understanding that persistence is one of the greatest weapons of the social marketing.

Organizational Commitment
Nothing is more important to a social marketing campaign than organizational commitment. Likewise, a small organization or entrepreneur has no greater advantage over their larger counterparts than organizational commitment. The larger the organization, the more decision-makers; and along with more decision-makers comes the inevitable resistance to online outreach and social marketing. Whether we like it or not, there are those among society who are adverse to social marketing. Human resources departments, legal and compliance officers are often fearful that a broad social marketing platform will encourage employees to spend an increasing amount of time online and create more opportunity for negative publicity to the company.

Marketing efforts within such larger organizations are often limited, results are more heavily scrutinized, patience is lessened and achievement is not recognized. Smaller organizations consist of fewer opinion leaders that are often more tightly knit. As a result, organizational commitment is often uniform throughout the organization as all employees are working as a team to build success. As a result, when small successes are recognized it often fuels further commitment to social marketing efforts.

Add secure forms to your site and earn referral fees

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:52:00 +0000

An important part of online outreach and marketing is the building of a customer base and collection of data. Whether you are a non-profit organization, for-profit merchandiser or service provides, every effort you make on the internet is designed to build an online following. FormSpring is a trusted company I have long turned to to build web forms that integrate with my websites, collect data and allow flexibility in database management. The easy-to-use form builder provides even the most novice individual a platform for building and adding forms without any programming, software, or special skills.

Unlike many free form tools like Google Docs, Formspring offers flexibility in sharing data, multiple download conversions, customized forms, API, secure forms and smart-logic technology. Whether you want to capture an email address or utilize webforms for customer service, FormSpring has long been a trusted and proven provider.

FormSpring offers multiple pricing options ranging from a free account to their Max Plan.

Free Account

3 free forms
10 fields per form
1 user

Starter Account - $14 per month

5 forms
50 fields per form
1 user
500 mb of upload storage
Secure forms
Payment Processing
3rd party integration

Professional Account - $29 per month

20 forms
200 fields per form
5 users
1gb of upload storage
Secure forms
Payment Processing
3rd party integration

Business (just the name) Account - $59 per month

100 forms
Unlimited fields per form
10 users
2gb of upload storage
Secure forms
Payment Processing
3rd party integration

Max Account - $159 per month

1000 forms\
Unlimited fields per form
25 users
10gb of upload storage
Secure forms
Payment Processing
3rd party integration

In the past, I have used FormSpring for multiple sites and organizations; utilizing both their free and paid accounts. Among these applications have been contact forms to reduce spam, mailing lists, event registration, volunteer registration, secure donation collection and legislative advocacy campaigns. In three years of working with FormSpring we have not had one complaint. Moreover, FormSpring offers an affiliate program than can help offset the costs of their service or provide additional revenue to online marketers.

Affiliate Program
Formspring's affiliate program offers you the opportunity to earn a 25% commission off of any customer you refer, during the first year of their account. Moreover, referrals do not even have to immediately sign up for a paid account to earn a referral fee. If a customer signs up for a free account and then converts to a paid account 4 months later, you earn your referral fee for the remainder of the first year.

The referral link utilizes a 30 day cookie and payments are sent within five days of the first calendar day of the month.

Click here to find out more.

Diary - Event outreach and creating a buzz

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:25:00 +0000

Looking forward to our national town hall meeting, we had three challenges to overcome: Time, Awareness and Cost. Although time and public awareness represented a challenge, the largest obstacle in my mind was overcoming the $100 participant fee that was levied upon participants. The fee was not of our design but rather a necessity to offset the enormous costs of such a tech-heavy, national meeting. However, we were able to secure funding to offer more than 100 scholarships to offset the participant fees. Unfortunately, the general public was largely unaware of both the event and availability of scholarships.

As our team met over the course of the next two days, we devised a strategy based upon two overriding

objectives: To protect the reputation of our organization and to achieve our attendance objectives. In order to achieve these objectives our team, consisting of our 4 person communications staff and the staff of The Autism Program of Illinois devised a plan to raise media awareness, open new communication channels, reach out to our organizational partners and better engage our community. For the first time in the organizations history, the electronic communications and the internet would become the chosen media for our outreach objectives.

Raising Media Awareness
With limited coverage to date and a propensity for media to provide post-event coverage, we had our hands full. Our media outreach would consist of utilizing our current resources and devising a choreographed plan for press releases.

Using Cision Point's press release services we immediately structured a general and short-version press release that was sent to more than 350 media outlets in the Chicagoland area.
At the same time, we released the short-version press release on the event across the internet utilizing 6 different and tested, free Press Release services. Utilizing such Press Releases allowed us to break into major news aggregators across the internet and increase search engine ranking for the event.
Finally, I utilized my online account with the Examiner.com to publish a news article for the national event. The article was immediately picked up by services such as Google News and gave us the opportunity to directly target participants.

Opening New Communication Channels
The plan we set forth was to serve two purposes: protecting the reputation of our organization and achieving participation. Many nonprofit organizations have a fear of failure. As a result, the greatest outreach opportunities are often overlooked as they attempt to distance themselves from efforts that have failed and take credit for successful efforts. However, as any entrepreneur will tell you, failure often provides the best learning tools on the path to success. As I advised our team, the benefits of increased outreach would far outweigh any consequences of failure. By increasing our outreach efforts in the public domain, nobody could make the case that we shared responsibility for any failure of the event. If our efforts were documented and they were absent, public perception would protect our reputation. In addition, if we achieved our attendance and media objectives, our organization would receive the appropriate credit.

In order to achieve our underlying objectives, I wanted to assure that our organization ruled the search engines and online buzz surrounding the event. Although we had posted information on our websites, facebook and twitter accounts, we needed more to drive traffic and achieve search engine optimization. As a result we increased our communication channels as follows:

We identified and used targeted keywords in every Facebook and Twitter posting to increase search engine ranking.
We not only posted using Facebook's linking technology, but also used text based links as an alternative when posting.
We quickly designed and developed a new blog specific to the event, Autism Town Hall. The blog was created through Blogger, designed to match our normal site and posts utilized a selected lists of keywords and contextual linking to our own network of sites and event sites. In my experience with free blogging platforms, the Google owned blogger tends to be indexed within a shorter period of time than other blogs. Within 2 days, the blog was not only indexed but was receiving considerable traffic.
I once again turned to other sites for which I am a contributor. The sites I had chosen are quickly indexed, picked up by news aggregators and provided a platform to increase traffic and targeting.

Reaching out to organizational partners

As a service provider and developer of the only state-wide Autism Resources Network nationwide, we have been blessed with a solid base of organizational partners. By increasing communication with those partners and asking them to help us with increased awareness and attendance objectives, we were able to further build backlinks, garner more traffic and raise awareness.

Increased public engagement

Our social networks played an integral role in increasing awareness and attendence for the national meeting. Prior to my arrival, the marketing and communications staff was overloaded but still able to build a good following across our fan pages. The first priority that we undertook was to schedule targeted postings across social networks throughout the day. The added benefit of having four organizational centers with Facebook pages allowed us to send content from different pages without appearing as advertising spammers. This targeted approach allowed us to increase our fan base without ending up in the dreaded "hide" category.
Through our social networking efforts, we identified a dozen influencers who strongly supported our organization and the upcoming event. By personally reaching out to those influencers, we were able to see further growth within metrics.
At the same time, we quickly examined how our email communications were being handled. Unfortunately, like many organizations, each person has set up their own distribution lists and email addresses are scattered throughout files and folders. We quickly identified and consolidated key lists into a targeted email campaign for the event. In addition, we developed a distribution list of respondents and established a plan to further communicate event information and reminders.
In terms of the broader internet, I turned to key influencers outside of our social networks. I had no relationship with these individuals other than a shared common goal. By identifying individuals supportive of the event who had considerable traffic to their blogs/sites, we were able to further increase awareness.

Within one week of my arrival, our organizational team was acting in unison and with a clear plan of action. In terms of my primary outreach goals, within 2 weeks, we had rapidly achieved top search engine rankings for our targeted keywords. More importantly, however, was the realization that our organization and references to our organization were dominating the front page across every search engine. We were entering the final week of October; having bombarded media, partners and the public with information, our team lowered the volume, analyzed results and prepared for a final push that would occur during the first week of November.

6 Free press release services for your organization

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:27:00 +0000

A key component of online marketing, especially for non-profit organizations operating on tight budgets, is the utilization of both free and paid services in communicating. Press release services are advertised across the internet, but time and time again users are disappointed by a lack of results or followthrough on the advertised services. The 6 press release services have proven to deliver for our past PR efforts. All of the services offer free releases along with enhanced services.

ClickPress.com – Distributes free press releases to Google News and others. Also offers an enhanced paid service Topix.net, Gold level will also get you to sites like LexisNexis.

Free-Press-Release.com – Easy press release distribution for free. Site submits to Google news and offers 3 enhanced PR levels that allow deletion, tracking greater distribution and more.

NewswireToday.com – Free distribution tools and site submits to Google News, Ask, Lycos, Yahoo Search and MSN. Offers a premium service including logo, photographs and more.

PR.Com - Allows free press releases and job postings along with a paid plan that allows a company profile, SEO optimization and more.

PRUrgent.com – Distributes your release for free and offers templates and help writing a release. Offers two levels of enhanced release and design services.

PRLog.org – One of my favorites. Easy to use, allows html, spam protection and more. Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.

Diary - The unexpected beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:31:00 +0000

October 15th
In mid-October, I took on a position as the New Media Outreach Coordinator for an Illinois based non-profit organization. I was familiar with the multi-centered, multi-million dollar organization and understood many of the challenges that I would encounter in building an effective online outreach program for such an organization. Like many non-profit organizations, online outreach was an unknown endeavor and the value of such an effort was not fully received nor understood. However, facing similar challenges in the past, I was confident that we could quickly develop an action plan and produce measurable results.

When I accepted the position, I had established three primary goals:

Develop a multi-faceted, but targeted presence online to increase community engagement and better control public information concerning our organization.
Build an online community of supporters of our organization that would readily support our organizations mission, fundraising and legislative advocacy.
Increase organizational revenue by implementing strategic online fundraising drives and non-fundraising revenue generating opportunities.

The good news was that the organization had previously built a nice website (with sub-domains for each center) and had created a footprint within Facebook and Twitter. With a foundation in place, I was confident we could quickly build results.

The Unexpected

After 13 years of experience in small business and organizational marketing, I have learned that there is only one certainty within any marketing plan: The Unexpected Always Occurs. My new position with The Hope Institute for Children and Families would be no different, as I learned within minutes of walking through the doors.

On my first day, after completing the usual catalog of employment and tax documents, I finally arrived at my office at 9:55 am. As I arrived, I was not greeted with the typical introductions, tours and welcomes. Rather, I was greeted with: "We are so glad you are here, I have a conference call in 5 minutes I would like you to sit in on." What? Huh? And so it began, every preconceived plan I had naturally formed within my mind was put on hold as the unexpected took control.

A center of the organization was taking part in a national symposium consisting of 16 locations nationwide, all connected through video-conferencing technology. The national meeting would consist of more than 1,000 participants nationwide and our organization was a sponsor of the central hub for the event. As such, we had committed to helping fill the 350 participants of the central hub. During the course of that first conference call our organization's team quickly recognized that a minimal amount of event marketing had taken place, there was a leadership by committee mentality that was creating no results. In addition, we quickly recognized that event fell apart we would face heavy scrutiny along with a loss of substantial capital and resource investments in the project. With less than three weeks to accept registrations, our central hub had only 29 reservations, with less than 90 nationwide. It was now apparent that my preconceived plans would have to be put on hold and our team would have to take an active leadership role in promoting the event and enticing participants.

Seth Godin offers 3,000 review copies of Linchpin for Acumen donors

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Seth Godin has teamed up with the Acumen Fund to offer a unique social marketing campaign for the charity. Seth is offering to send 3,000 advance review copies of his newest book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, to be released in January to anyone willing to make a $30 or greater donation to the Acumen Fund. In an announcement on his blog, Godin stated,

"The first 3,000 people who make a donation to the Acumen Fund (at least $30) get one at my expense. The money you pay goes directly to Acumen, you get the fun of making a donation and get a tax deduction before the end of the year, and I figure out which of my readers most want a copy of my book."

The Acumen Fund "exists to help end poverty by changing how the world addresses it. We do this in two ways. We invest patient capital to identify, strengthen and scale business models that effectively serve the poor. And we champion and spread this approach as an effective complement to traditional aid, which can create dependence, or pure market approaches, which can bypass the actual needs of the poor."

The marketing move not only offers Seth Godin's extensive base of fans a chance to preview his newest book, but will assure that the Acumen Fund receives $90,000 in online donations in the coming weeks. For my part, I believe that the marketing effort will not only serve to create a buzz for Godin's newest release, but also demonstrates the value that a strategic Social Marketing and Online Outreach plan can add to a non-profit organization.

To read more visit: Seth Godin's Blog

To view Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

To learn more about an organization we care dearly about visit: The Hope Institute for Children and Families

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Giving Back - A Season of Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:24:00 +0000

An important part of my life is a focus on giving back to organizations that provide valuable services to the communities we live in. As part of that ongoing effort I would like to share the following and urge everyone to give a Gift of Hope this holiday season.

Dear Friends of The Hope Institute,

This is the season for giving, and the children of The Hope Institute for Children and Families are no exception!

Our children – all of whom have multiple physical and developmental disabilities – have learned the importance of giving back to the community in gratitude for all they have received. It is just one of the many ways in which The Hope Institute prepares youth to achieve their full potential despite the challenges they face.

This year, our senior classes will be serving meals and clearing tables at an agency that helps the homeless. Will, Jamie and Ashley will share Holiday treats and play bingo with residents at a local nursing home, and Drew and Taylor will deliver small gifts to those staying at the local Ronald McDonald House. Jamie, Will, Ashley, Taylor and Drew are not only learning about giving, they are inspiring us all by the ways they are putting those lessons into action!

You are in inspiration to many. Will you continue the legacy of giving by supporting the Children of Hope? Your donation today – using the handy link on our Facebook fan page or our website – will help us continue to teach important lessons of daily life for some of our society’s most vulnerable youth.

More significantly, you will be helping to create a future of Hope for children, families and communities across Illinois. Thank you in advance for opening your heart to our children in this season of giving.

Please share this story with your friends and family

You can visit The Hope Institute for Children and Families on Facebook or at http://thehopeinstitute.us/

About The Hope Institute for Children and Families

The Hope Institute for Children and Families is a nonprofit center providing educational, residential and health services to children ages 5-21 with multiple developmental disablities, including Autism Spectrum Disorders, and their families. Founded in 1957 by the Jordans, a Springfield, Illinois family who could not find specialized services for their disabled daughter, The Hope School was created to provide more than custodial care for children. At the time, a private group facility that served children with multiple disabilities was virtually unheard of. The Jordan family changed that, and since then The Hope School has grown into a total of six centers now called The Hope Institute for Children and Families.

Most students live year-round at The Hope Institute located in Springfield, Illinois and attend either the on-campus accredited school or are enrolled at public schools. Thousands of other children with developmental disabilities across Illinois benefit from the variety of programs and services offered by The Hope Institute through its six centers:

•The Hope School Learning Center
•The Hope Institute Center for Residential Services
•The Hope Institute Health and Wellness Center
•The Hope Institute Learning Academy
•The Autism Program of Illinois
•Noll Medical Pavilion

40 Blog & Website Submission Directories

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:47:00 +0000

Blog directories can serve as a simple promotional tool for every blogger and website. Although no directory, desptie some claims, will bring you thousands of visitors, the linking value, potential rankings and other benefits are important. Below are 40 free, paid and human-edited directories to help you get started.

Large Directories

Technorati - One of the largest directories and blog sharing and ranking sites.

Icerocket.com - Icerocket offers inclusion in its feed based/linking directory along with a free blog tracker service.

Blogged.com - Quickly becoming a large directory, sharing and reading community, yet not so large that a smaller blog will be overlooked.

Human-Edited Directories

Dmoz – The most popular and largest site directory. All sites must be submitted and approved by human editors.

Mahalo – A human edited search site with easy navigation and well-funded to continue to grow.

Best of the Web – Very popular directory, with strict submission guidelines and requires payment.

Pegasus Directory - Smaller directory offering free listings and human edited

Free Directories

Blog-Search.com – Directory of over 15,000 blogs and offers two free tips newsletters.

Blogarama.com – Over 151,000 blogs and growing at constant rate. Site offers stats and visitors can leave a review.

BlogBunch.com – Simple and straightforward site with numerous categories.

BlogCatalog.com – A blog directory with an interactive feel allowing direct interaction between bloggers.

BlogExplosion.com – Directory with more than 100,000 blogs that allows users to review your blog.

Blogflux.com – Over 157,000 blogs in their system. Offers directory, stats and other free tools.

Blogdigger.com - An RSS based directory offering free site submission.
Bloggingfusion.com - A small, free blog directory of 3,000 blogs. However, the directory is selective and allows comprehensive listing details and reviews.

Bloggernity.com – Blog directory of more than 50,000 sites.

Bloghints.com - Smaller but growing directory ranking high on search engines.
BlogHop.com – Directory has more than 32,000 blogs and uses a tagging system for blog searching.

BlogHub.com – A directory of over 72,000 blogs from 35,000 members and offers a social community for bloggers.

BlogListing.net – Free submission, some articles and featured listing opps.

BlogRankings.com – A few thousand blogs, categorized with updated post searches of recently pinged sites.

BlogToplist.com – A free submission directory that ranks based upon number of visitors and/or click outs.

Blogville.us - New directory but ranked high in search results and gaining attention.

Britblog.com – A directory of British blogs but under construction in late 2009.

Findingblog.com – Smaller directory with free submission.

GeekySpeaky.com - A small blog directory of 400-500 sites.

GetBlogs.com – Over 11,000 blogs split into categories.

GlobeOfBlogs.com – Over 66,000 global blogs.

IBlogBusiness.com – A directory of a couple thousand business blogs.

LSBlogs.com – A directory of blogs and blog-related sites.

MyBlog2U.com – Free submission directory with a couple thousand sites.

JoeAnt.com – Directory indexing by location and category.

Topblogging.com - Directory ranking sites upon hits and in/out.

Top of Blogs - Old style directory based upon hits including inclusion of subscriber base.

QuickBlogDirectory.com – An upstart directory with few listings requiring only a reciprocal text link.

WeBlogAlot.com – Allows you to add your RSS feed or a ping.

Paid Directories

AliveDirectory.com – All submissions are manually checked, offers annual and permanent pricing options.

AvivaDirectory.com – A smallish directory at only a little over 750 blogs, but well organized and easy to look at.

Bloggeries.com – A directory and resource center for bloggers, they have reasonable fees and provide a community just for bloggers.

BlogUniverse.com – A low cost submission site with 23,000 listings.

Business.com – A directory for sites in just about every industry, a highly searched domain name, but a fee to be listed.

10 most popular Wordpress Themes 11/09

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:54:00 +0000

The ten most popular WordPress Themes as of November 2009.

Mystique by digitalnature

Theme homepage

Feature-packed theme with a solid design, built-in widgets and a intuitive theme settings interface.

Pixel by Sam007

Theme Homepage

Dark WP theme with 2-3 column layout, dropdown categories menu, multiple widget-ready placement and feedburner email form integrated, easy to customize.

Atahualpa by bytesforall

Theme Homepage

1-5 columns, fluid or fixed width, rotating header images and 2 dozen option pages. Support and tutorials available.

Constructor by Antonshevchuk

Theme Homepage

Many-in-one theme (six layouts, configured colors, fonts and slideshow, widget ready). Build your own theme on settings page.

jQ by devolux

Theme Homepage

Two columns, four widget areas and loads of jQuery functions (dropdown navigation, font resizing and more). The theme options include a movable sidebar, custom colours, excerpts on index pages, category or page navigation, different font and colour schemes.

Arclite by digitalnature

Theme Homepage

Simple but elegant theme with lots of theme options.

Swift by gandham

Theme Homepage

Fast loading, SEO optimized, Adsense ready, server friendly wordpress theme. It features 2 Magzine layouts,two different header styles, tabbed interface, a featured post slider, and the ability to disable all javascript features with a single click. Bundled with lot of options to build your own unique, professional and browser-safe WordPress Theme, SWIFT is the perfect choice for those who need a powerful and customizable theme. SWIFT has a active user community to help you with support queries.Note: Don't go by the preview link here, just few minutes on the option page will give you premium quality stunning look. SWIFT has a dedicated support forum.

Arras by zyml

Theme Homepage

Magazine-styled theme with tons of features. Ready for alternate styles. Includes featured posts slideshow, different post layouts, multi-tabbed sidebar, custom single meta fields for reviews and many other customisable features.

15 Favicon, icon and graphics generators and creation sites

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:17:00 +0000

A list of 15 popular and tested websites that you can use to create a favicon for your website.

Converters

Web Script Lab Favicon Generator - You can upload a JPG, GIF, PNG or BMP and convert it to a 16 X 16 favicon.

Favicon Upload Gallery - Upload file and make it a favicon (four different sizes). Add it their online favicon gallery.

Favicon.cc - Create your own icon by importing a picture or using their online designer.

ConvertIcon - Allows you to convert PNGs to ICOs and vice-versa.

Dynamic Drive Favicon - Upload GIF, JPG, PNG or BMP and create favicons or icons.

Favicon from Pics - Create a favicon or animated favicon from your uploaded photos.

256 Pixels - Has a daily favicon contest. Create a new favicon with their built in palette and they now allow uploaded pics.

HTML Kit - Buddy Icons from Pics - Creates messenger/buddy icons from uploaded pics.

Design Palette Only

Anitfavicon - Create simple colored icons with up too 2 lines of text.

My Cool Button - Create high quality "web 2.0" style icons.

Somacon Icon Drawer - Draw your own icon.

Ajaxload - Free animated icon generator for use during ajax loading time.

Paid Icon Services

Iconize Me - Artists turn your pictures into icons.

Icon Buffet - Large selection of sharp icons for websites.

StockIcons - Large selection of icons for your site.

20 Essential Facebook applications for businesses and pages

noreply@blogger.com (Jbrown) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:51:00 +0000

Below are 20 essential Facebook applications for businesses and individuals engaged in social marketing and utilizing Facebook.

Integrating Feeds and Blogs

Networked Blogs

Networked Blogs allows you to integrate your blog feed and build a base of followers on Facebook. The application can publish your feed to both your profile and fan page.

Social RSS

Social RSS is the most popular RSS reader app in Facebook. You can add your blogs, twitter and RSS feeds to your Personal Profile and Business Pages.

Promotions and Contests

Promotions

Promotions Facebook verified application for companies to run branded interactive promotions on their fan pages. Promotion formats include: sweepstakes, contests, coupon giveaways, and more...

Countdown Calendar

Create a custom countdown for your profile. The app features numerour skins, pic integration and more.

Contests

Contests for Fan Pages enables companies to easily create & launch branded photo, video, design & essay-based contests on Facebook Fan Pages within minutes.

Social Profile Linking

Twitter

Links your Twitter account and Facebook Fan Pages

Social Tweet

Social Tweet enables you to tweet directly from Facebook. It updates both your Twitter and Facebook profile. It can also be displayed on your Wall, Boxes tab or a new "Tweet" tab.

Digg.com

You’ll have the option to post anything you Digg, submit, or comment on to your Facebook feed.

Slideshare

SlideShare allows you to link your Slideshare account and share presentations and documents with your Facebook network.

Selective Twitter Status

Update your Facebook Status from Twitter, but only for the tweets you choose.

Selling

Ebay Selling Feed

Post items your selling to your profile and more.

Mobile Apps

Blackberry for Smartphones

Video

YouTube Video Box

YouTube Video Box is the best way to share your favourite YouTube videos on Facebook. Quickly find videos with our integrated search, show off your favourite videos on their very own profile tab, import your favourite videos to your profile or page from an existing YouTube.com account and much more!

Posted Items Pro

Allows you organize and list old posted items such as video, pics, links and more.

Custom Profile & Pages

Application Builder

Create your own facebook application without knowledge of any programming language in few minutes for free.

Extended Info

Extended Info allows you to add extra fields to your profile or page, such as Currently Reading, Favorite Foods, or anything you can think of.

Profile HTML

Add HTML to your Profile

Static FBML

Add customization to your Fan Page by using Static FBML to add select html or Facebook mark-up language to your Fan Page.

Notes

The Notes application page displays notes recently written by your friends, notes in which your friends have been tagged, and links to your own notes.

Flash

This application will add a box to your Page in which you can upload your own Flash Files to achieve advanced customization.