Marketing Blueprint - Web Marketing for 2011

Steve Dalton - Golden Tech in the News

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:29:00 +0000

Managing significant risk challenges business owners - Post-Tribune

Managing significant risk challenges business owners - Post-Tribune

It's been far too long, but I think it's time for the risk takers, including myself, to come back into this economy and show the way. Bye bye government tomfoolery, be gone regulatory malfeasance, let's pump up the economy the way it's always worked.

Hurricane Planning - Golden DataGuard

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:47:00 +0000

For companies in South and Southwest Florida planning for hurricane season is a big deal. Golden Technologies has announced a solution for those businesses that is inexpensive and safe.

Golden DataGuard isn’t a “cloud” solution. Data is not floating around the web with nowhere to go; instead it is safe and monitored on a daily basis by a team of experts.
Do not wait until the office floods to take action. Contact Golden Technologies to learn more about Golden DataGuard.

Why not use the "cloud"? Why backup key data out of state instead of in the hurricane zone? Let's talk

Golden Technologies Naples

YMCA of America requires website rebranding and design

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:56:00 +0000

For those that are following along - I have moved to Information Technology and Web Marketing Company Golden Technologies as Business Development Director. We just released the Valparaiso YMCA website, which was precipitated by a requirement by the YMCA of America that all such member organizations totally rebrand.

This site fits those requirements: Valparaiso YMCA

2011 is about influence

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:32:00 +0000

Or so says online enthusiast and evangelist Chris Brogan.

Improve your Influence, says Brogan, but do so by giving and helping. Those who try to increase their influence merely at the expense of others, or to bolster their own numbers, tend to fall off quickly. Brogan says you influence more by helping even more.

Duplicitous content and other myths

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:45:00 +0000

No, it won't hurt if you post the same thing on two blogs:

Words words and more rain on a blue rug

For those that are confused, here's the start of today's Speedblogging exercise ... I think it will end up 29 posts in less than an hour.

I do it all the time, I have different readers in different places. This site features social media and technology ideas ... the first site I linked is all about international affairs. Duh@!

Oh and if you're here for the speedblogging (watch out for the weird animals) then keep moving along to Bible Study Online from Daltons

Northwest Indiana Events

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:58:00 +0000

FEATURED THIS WEEK—What’s new on nwi.com/parent

June 23rd, 2010 - By NWI Parent Staff

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED EVENT

Jun 27: Midsummer Celebration
CHESTERTON | Celebrate summer in traditional Scandinavian style at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore’s Chellberg Farm with traditional Scandinavian music provided by Lingonberry Jam, folk dancing by Dans Norden and the children’s dance group Nordikids, and costumes. Visitors are invited to bring flowers from home to take part in the age-old custom of decorating the Maypole. The event also includes traditional Scandinavian games and crafts for the children and demonstrations of loom weaving, knife making and wood carving. Find out more here.

ALSO THIS WEEK

• Ongoing: Kids Moves at the Southlake YMCA in Crown Point

• Ongoing: Science Storms at Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago

• Ongoing: Teen Strength Training Class at the Southlake YMCA in Crown Point

• Ongoing: YMCA Summer Adventure Camp at the Southlake YMCA in Crown Point

• Through Jun 25: Design your own JDRF NASCAR Contest. Information at jdrf.org.

• Through Jul 21: The True Story of the Three Little Pigs at the Apollo Theater in Chicago

• Through Jul 22: Peter Pan at the Apollo Theater in Chicago

• Through Jul 29: Historical Discovery Series for Families and Individuals at Deep River County Park in Hobart

• Through Jul 30: City of Hammond’s Summer Recreation programs at various sites in Hammond

• Through Jul 31: Summer Reading Programs at Hammond Public Libraries

• Through Aug 6: Discovery Camps at the Rogers-Lakewood Park’s Discovery Shelter in Valparaiso

• Through Aug 13: Beginner Junior Golf Lessons at Cedar Creek Family Golf Center in Cedar Lake

• Through Aug 20: No Bummer Summer Camp at Portage High School West and Portage Township YMCA

• Through Sept 3: Family Fun Festival at Millennium Park in Chicago

• Jun 28: Cooking and Craft Class at the Schererville Town Hall

• Jun 27: Independence Day Kids Parade at Prairie West Park in St. John

NEW ARRIVALS TO THE NWI PARENT CALENDAR

The NWI Parent Calendar is constantly updated with new listings. Check often for new upcoming events, performances and more:

• Jul 5: Crown Point Annual Picnic at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Crown Point

• Jul 23: St. Jude House Fundraiser at RailCats Ballgame at the US Steel Yard in Gary

Blogging politics to make money

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:51:00 +0000

One of my best money makers online is my political blog. The traffic is 8X's higher than my mortgage or real estate site, and the commenting is much higher velocity.

Current income from google ads is running roughly $5 a day on just one site. That's not much if a person is trying to live on the income, but I'm not. I'm using my google ad income to pay for hosting, advertising, and creative work. The actual home building and mortgage companies make my living.

An example below of a recent active post that had a lot of income potential as well:

Predictions Please

This is an open thread, and will be updated both here and with links from #nwielect on twitter from now till Wednesday morning.

Please put in the comments your predictions for all the races you care about. We'll try to keep a running compilation and keep linking back to the above mentioned thought stream. Think you're so smart ... then let's see your predictions front and center right here for all to analyze.

I'll be glad to start them off:
US Senate Coats, US Rep Pastore, House 19 Klein, Porter Council 1 Tracy, Porter Assessor Snyder, Porter Auditor Kopp, Portage Trustee Jent, Porter Council Rivas ...

(Open Thread will be updated from comments every couple hours)

GOP Grunt: Three Reasons to Use Location Based Services

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:59:00 +0000

GOP Grunt: Three Reasons to Use Location Based Services

Have to agree with Chris Faulkner on all of these ideas.

Michianatweetup Controversy

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:04:00 +0000

Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.
Benjamin Rush

Can't we all just get along?

For those just now checking in for details on tomorrow’s tweetup at the Blue Chip Casino – see our original post Kyle Lacy Tweetup at Blue Chip Casino

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE EVERYONE!

Now for the controversy that rocked NW Indiana on Friday some bullet points:

The NWIndiana Tweetup has been working terrific for the last 14 months as a collaboration of many participants, no one person has control or is trying to make money off the effort. ( @nwitweetup)
There is an active social media scene in the Michiana area and a tweetup was destined to take place. At some point in 2009 Cheryl from Michianatweetup.com began the planning, set up a ning social networking site, and starting connecting interested people.
Our own group here in NW Indiana thought it might be fun to reach out and do a joint event in Michigan City, and the opportunity was upon us with Indianapolis author and social media expert Kyle Lacy coming to town tomorrow April 13th for another event. We asked Kyle if he would be willing to stay around for the evening and join us. He agreed and it was on!
At some point in the promotion our own Dave Woodson (@davewoodson) talked to a Wayne Clayton of another group calling itself Michianameetup.com but moving quickly on April 6th during these same conversations to attempt to take control of the name #MichianaTweetup for his company. He even went so far as to suggest that because they were scheduling an event on April 30th, they could not help promote our event on the 13th. Weird!
It would be awesome to show Wayne’s first mildly threatening comment on this blog, but he has since edited our the threatening portion. Well after threatening this blog with words suggesting that he owned the term and would like us to stop using his term … the floodgates opened wide.
Now some 80 comments and 45 retweets later it would appear that Wayne’s company was attempting to be the only Michianatweetup organization, and perhaps even profit off the name. To put it simply … things started to get ugly.

Now that raw nerves have calmed down, and cooler heads in both NW Indiana and Michiana have prevailed we come to the point of a few salient summaries.

First, no one owns a twitter hashtag
Second, this tweetup in Michigan City was probably going to be attended by our normal 40-45 people … but now due to the controversy we can expect to see a far greater number of attendees. The shear volume of comments, tweets, retweets, and other blog posts about the subject has driven the information into more hands.
Third, as we’ve noted in the past … a whole lot of links and events get promoted in the many hashtags on twitter. But in the absence of the A-list users getting involved, it’s hard to get noticed. This is the same as any other kind of media or marketing. Twitter is no different, the only real change is that you can become an A-list Twitter user if you put in the work to collaborate, engage, retweet, and give freely. It takes time, and buying 15,000 followers does not an A-lister make!

I would suggest that the controversy was good for Northwest Indiana and Michiana. Did Wayne suffer from wading into the fray, sadly yes. But even at that members of our own group have offered to cross promote his profit making event and work with the competing group. Why, because we’ve all benefited from the collaborative environment that exists in NW Indiana.

As a political fan, one who doesn’t think all things political are bad, this raises the question of fabricated controversies. In this instance there was no battle until Wayne jumped into the fray with a veiled threat. But what are the twitter and blog ethics surrounding fabricating a controversy just for the sake of traffic, activity, promotion, and profits?

Or did we …”

(Contributed by guest author Steve Dalton ( daltonsbriefs) from Northwest Indiana Real Estate and Mortgages from the NWI Tweetup Blog)

Amazon Affiliate Income Alert

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:03:00 +0000

Blogger Allyn Hayne at Blogger Illustrated right here in Northwest Indiana wrote a post last year, where he compared miserable results using Pepper Jam versus much better results on Amazon Affiliate products.

Video Reviews for Amazon Affiliate Marketing

Is anyone making money online

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:27:00 +0000

Well sure there are tons of bloggers and new media entrepreneurs making money online, but what about locally here in Northwest Indiana. Think anyone is actually turning some money, and what model are they using? My thoughts below, but glad to have new ones added ... this is more a start to the conversation:

By my own estimate there are roughly 300 blogs in Northwest Indiana, but only 30-50 that get posted daily. I follow them all on Northwest Indiana RSS Feeds
Of these blogs, it looks like the predominant monetization strategy is google ads, which we all know only makes money if the traffic is extremely high. Best I've heard is that a few local bloggers are pulling in $500 a month from clicks on their google ads. Anyone better than that?
The Times of Northwest Indiana does feature both normal ad blocks as well as google ads. They have not given me any information, but I get the feeling that the ad blocks are generally given away to print ad buyers as a plus. The Post Tribune is pretty weak all the way around online.
ValpoLife and PortageLife seem to be the best examples of making money with 100% online content, balanced between sponsorships and ad block sales.
Another method of monetization for websites and blogs is affiliate links, where you only get paid if the consumer purchases from the advertisers. It looks like New Media Whistle, Dave Woodson, Natfinn's site, and some very secretive sites by others are going after this SEO heavy tactic. No one is willing to talk money, but my gut says the best results so far are combinations of sites pulling in $2,000 per month. Anyone have a better result?
Lastly are those who use their online profiles and writing to gain offline business, many real estate agents, insurance quotes, mortgage bankers, and coaches use this method.

I will begin posting online income results here on April 1st, no not a Fools joke, and I'm guessing the google ads, affiliate income, banner ads total will be roughly $700 for March. My goal, like many others is to push this income up this year to the point that all online marketing expenses are paid by income and I can grow my home building and mortgage businesses for free online.

#nwindiana v. #nwi debate on twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:56:00 +0000

This will make post #7 on the same debate from this last weekend, here are the previous posts:

Twitter thought stream debate in Northwest Indiana

Twitter controversy in Northwest Indiana

Do you want controversy to affect your small business?

Valpo Life post that started the debate on twitter

Chris Keller from @nwi on his position, since they stand to gain the most from using #nwi

I was a solid and remain a solid proponent of the use of #nwindiana, it keeps our thought stream separate from the Times' @nwi and reminds all of us that we are in Indiana

New Media in NW Indiana

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:01:00 +0000

Is all this new stuff going to work for me? | New Media Whistle: "New Media - Inbound Marketing - Search Engine Optimization - World Wide Web - Click thru - Internet marketing - Affiliate sales - Blogs and Tweets - social media engagement - reputation management - search marketing ....

New Year's Resolutions - 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:09:00 +0000

In a classic New Years move, I have decided to write out my resolutions for the year. I like to group my resolutions by topic so these on this site are related to online and inbound marketing:

Comment on all blogs written in and by Northwest Indiana writers
Complete #nwiseo (#1 with 11 peeps) and conduct two more full SEO campaigns
Grow twitter following to 25,000
Grow facebook following to 5,000 on personal page
Hold top 5 Active Rain in Indiana, 200,000 points
Make $5,000 in google adsense
Build up region blog aggregator (Media Whistle or NWItweetup)
Drive more traffic to major personal blogs
Get involved on Youtube and Posterous
Open

What else, what else will change so quickly that will make these goals seem old hat?

Cross-posting Merry Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:31:00 +0000

Christmas isn't all that political ... right? (from Northwest Indiana Politics)

I couldn't resist, even though I know you will all be spending time with family and unwrapping presents ... so no one will have time to read this political site ... right!

Christmas is a bit political isn't it? (See Christmas Story on Blueletter) If you believe, as I do, that Jesus is actually God incarnate, born of the virgin Mary, in a stable in Bethlehem roughly 2,000 years ago. If you believe that this birth and his eventual crucifixion and resurrection make up the perfect trifecta of prophetic implication, such that humans can have contact with the only Holy deity. Then Christmas is a lot political, and makes people around you cringe. Words we don't use much in post modern society aren't they? Words that can make a conversation go mighty quiet, and people walk away uncomfortable that anyone would be so rude to talk about religion or faith. It's so much easier to pretend about Santa Claus or gaze at a lit tree, but to push faith in Jesus that's going too far.

It's not that faith is uncomfortable, it's that a faith of specifics and a faith in a specific truth like Christ is uncomfortable. In this culture we celebrate the fact that everyone has their own beliefs ... yet the downside is that we've lost the ability to truly debate which of those beliefs are right and which are just plain hogwash. It's even become rude to suggest that one has a belief that is true, since this assigns "false" to another belief. Let's be frank, truth exists and all other beliefs are false, even if that hurts someone feelings.

Please enjoy your families, pray for peace in Jerusalem, remember Jesus' birth in the lowly manger, give gifts of joy, worship with hearts of grace and mercy ... Merry Christmas Northwest Indiana.

The beginning of twitter making some money

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:51:00 +0000

Twitter Lets Multiple Users Tweet To The Same Account:

Twitter is testing a new feature called 'Contributors' which allows multiple users to contribute tweets to a single Twitter account.

The feature, in a limited beta, is one of many Twitter says it is working on for business accounts. It's already supported by Twitter's API and will work with business applications by CoTweet and HootSuite.

Twitter, which has until recently focused on raising cash and growing its userbase, is slowly turning on its revenue spigot. Earlier this fall, it signed a search deal with Google and Microsoft There's been talk of new ads.

Still, an IPO or any kind of exit for Twitter remains some ways off.

On Twitter's blog, product exec Anamitra Banerji explains how 'Contributors' works:

The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations

I wonder how that would look? So far the Retweet function benefits the original tweeter much more than the retweeter.

What's you social media marketing plan for 2010?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:22:00 +0000

Social Media Dominates 2010 PR Planning, But SEO Increasingly in the Mix:

A new whitepaper from Vocus with their 2010 PR Planning Survey results has some encouraging statistics about the increasing role of search engine optimization in the overall PR mix.

Not surprisingly, social media gets the most attention with 80% of respondents indicating they plan to do more with it in 2010. But 57% also indicated that they plan to increase their focus on SEO:

That’s good news, because even just 2-3 years ago many companies’ efforts to integrate SEO and PR activities did not extend much beyond press release optimization. That’s certainly important but it’s just one tactic; there are a lot more opportunities to explore.

Greg Jarboe and Lee Odden are at the forefront of evangelizing the importance of SEO in public relations and in teaching how to actually implement integrated efforts. Both rightly deserve credit for increasing awareness industry-wide.

Another chart of interest in the Vocus whitepaper demonstrates how social media monitoring has become an essential part of the PR practioner’s toolkit:

News monitoring and online media databases have traditionally received the lion’s share of PR tool spending. Over time I’d expect to see social media monitoring tools grab more budget at the expense of both, as more and more focus is placed on direct communication with target audiences.

I was surprised to see only 36% of respondents are using online press rooms, since that should be a fundamental part of any corporate website. Perhaps some of the respondents took the question to mean third-party online press room services.

Alright Northwest Indiana, what's your plan for 2010? Do you even have a plan?

Can Your Social Media Handle the Drama Caused By a Nail?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:28:00 +0000

Can Your Social Media Handle the Drama Caused By a Nail?:
So my grandfather got new tires last Saturday from the local gas station. The tires were part of his pre-Florida roadtrip tune-up. Snowbirds need to make sure their wings are ready for flight (go to link for full article)
All because of a nail, something that probably slipped out of a roofing belt or out the rusted whole of a dumpster.
Imagine what would have happened if the owner hadn’t answered the call. Think of what would have happened if oldold man published his complaint online – assuming he still had a computer.
That sad truth is that most businesses are setting up their social media marketing tools to broadcast sales, deals, and published PR pieces. Most of them aren’t set to communicate with customers, attend to their needs, and turn negatives into positives.
Are your online tools set up to handle the drama that can be brought on by something as small as a nail? by @natfinn

Time to review your social media strategy for 2010.

3 SEO Browsers to Evaluate on-Page SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Publius Valerius Publicola 1776) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:13:00 +0000

3 SEO Browsers to Evaluate on-Page SEO: "

SEO browsers are designed to highlight features of a web page pertinent to the work of SEO. This way, it helps you browse sites the way an SEO should or possibly the way that Google would.

We have picked 3 popular browsers to evaluate, each of them having similar features.

Domaintools SEO browser

It gives us information concerning:

Whois record (also NS server and IP server history)

Site profile (SEO score, meta tags, Alt tags, relevancy score for the meta tags, word count and number of linked words, number of images and number of links as well as related sites)

Alexa and Compete scores

Search engine preview

Registration details

Server stats

Similar domains

This tool gives a fair bit of information off the back of the Whois record. It is probably the best tool to use if you want to focus on server and registrar information. It is quite thin on the ground as far as pure SEO information is concerned though, but it does give you links through to other tools if you want to see a spider view for example of use the W3C validator. It does give you basic information such as meta tag stats, number of images and some stats on the body of text. One interesting offering is the “SEO Score” that it assigns to a site. The SEO Score does not use PageRank or any Off-page factors, but it does use On-domain links, Off-domain links, and No-Follow links. There is no actual formula for this score but they say:

“Our goal is to allow everyone to accomplish a 100% score. If no obvious html optimization methods exist and everything looks good we will be giving it a 100%. We will be picky about the obvious things like completing Title tags and h1 tags, webmasters should be using these. We are very hard on frames and lag of alt tags.”

The idea is to help people understand where they can improve in their site. If you have a score of 20% for example, it’s pretty clear that you’ve missed out some obvious opportunities to optimise your site. With a high score in the 90’s you can safely say that you’ve pretty much covered everything. Beyond that it’s hard to make much use of it because it doesn’t actually tell you where the missed opportunities are. They do say that the scoring algorithm is in beta, but the info on this is from prior to 2007 if you read it. Their plans for the future include this “We will fetch all pages on your site and calculate PageRank according to the Standford Whitepaper. Then display the results in a bulk layout and allow for downloading of the results.” I’m not really sure what has and has not been implemented but it is going to be hard to calculate PageRank seeing that the value depends on a damping factor that only Google really knows and that the PageRank scoring method has changed since it’s implementation some 14 years ago. I don’t really know how useful it would be anyhow.

Spiderview

Spider view

Meta data report

Robots.txt

Lists all internal links

Status code

Lists all external links

Number of words

This one doesn’t give an overwhelming amount of information but it does have the advantage of actually crawling and listing all of the links in and out of your site. This is a nice touch and really helps web professionals in figuring out what a site looks like structurally speaking. Out of the 3 tools on show here, it offers the least amount of information about the site for SEO purposes. It is more a crawler tool rather than a complete SEO tool really. It would be nice to not have a long list of links but rather a better display of this information. Humans aren’t good at detecting patterns in long lists of data.

SEO Browser

It has both a basic and advanced mode, so this review is for the advanced mode. It gives information covering:

Meta data (meta tags, alt tags)

Text to page weight ratio

Load time, page size

Number of words

Number of images

Robots.txt

JavaScript elements

Frames

Number of links external and internal

Google analytics presence or something else

Response code

Spider view

Extra tools include the:

w3c validity checker

DNS info via intodns

HTTP viewer

Link checker

Duplicate content check

Quantcast clickstream reporting

Source code view

This tool is pretty cool because everything is made available on one big page, which means that if you;re looking over a handful of sites, you can do it quickly without having to skip to another page or another tab or something. It has a lot of useful information on display and will help anyone to identify problems and things they could improve on in their site. It also have links out to a number of other very useful tools as well. Out of the 3 tools, it’s the one that covers the most important SEO statistics for me.

Conclusion

All 3 tools have very different strengths. Using only one of them would be a shame, because the other 2 have lots of offer as well. DomainsTools is perfect if you want server and Registrar info for example rather than a code perspective. SpiderView is excellent to use for it’s crawler and allows you to take a look at the site structure (albeit not in a very user friendly way) and SEOBrowser is the bees knees you want to quickly give a site an SEO health check. All of them could be improved, but then all of them are free so as they say “There is no silver spoon”.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

3 SEO Browsers to Evaluate on-Page SEO

Top 5 Must-Read Social Media Books

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:57:00 +0000

Top 5 Must-Read Social Media Books: "

Steve Cunningham is the CEO of Polar Unlimited, a digital marketing agency. To win a signed and personalized copy of each of the books mentioned here, visit Read It For Me.

So you want to get up to speed fast on the latest social media thinking. Maybe give your colleague, boss or friend a dose of new social strategies. But where to start? Amazon nicely suggests 44,444 titles that they would be delighted to overnight direct to your bookshelf. Ummm, no thanks. Fortunately, you’ve got your own social media fairy right here. (Hi!) We’ve already done the hard part for you, and have narrowed down those 44,444 titles to 5 killer must-reads that can get you on the road to social media stardom. Abracadabra!

5 Social Media Lessons

This story is magically formatted for 2 types of people: readers and watchers. Look up for the video, or scroll down for the text. Magic. You’ll learn why trust is the new currency, from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, how the social media revolution has “turned the bullhorn around” from Tara Hunt, the two pillars of social media success from Mitch Joel, why you need to work your face off from Gary Vaynerchuk, and lastly, the nitty gritty of some of the most effective tools out there to grow your business and personal brand with Tamar Weinberg. These 5 ideas are (almost!) all you need to create and execute a powerful social media game-plan. Let’s go…

Lesson #1 – You Need to Build Trust

This lesson comes from Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

The first step in building trust is to turn yourself into Donnie Brasco. That’s right, you have to become a member of the community. The movie Donnie Brasco is the real life story of Joe Pistone, the FBI agent who infiltrated the Mafia and brought them to their knees. Joey spent 6 months sitting on a barstool in New York, drinking, eating peanuts, and watching the scene around him. He knew that the only way to integrate himself into the mafia community was to watch and learn how it operated first.

You should feel free to take the same approach, sans peanuts. Go to the websites of the people you want to connect with, and watch how they interact with each other. When you feel comfortable knowing how to interact, start leaving thoughtful comments on other people’s blogs. That lets the blogger know you’re listening and it helps them build up credibility. Your credibility will follow.

Lesson #2 – Turn the Bullhorn Around

This lesson comes from The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt.

What you’ll learn, while sitting on your virtual barstool, is the fascinating part: you’ll learn quite literally how to transform your products and services. And that’s a big deal. Hunt gives us some great tips on how to properly put all this new information to work to your advantage: (1) use it to design a product/service for the broadest possible community, (2) make sure you respond to all feedback, even if it’s with “no thanks,” and (3) give credit to the people whose ideas you implement.

Lesson #3 – Learn the Pillars of Social Media Success

This lesson comes from Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel.

You’ve listened to and integrated feedback, and now you are ready to communicate. The 2 pillars which should guide your communication are permission and content. Permission is grade-school easy: only share relevant and timely information with the people who have agreed to receive it. Content comes next. As Joel says, your ability to create compelling text, audio, video, and images is what’s going to build your story and get people excited about staying connected. He says to ask yourself these hard questions to decide what content to create: (1) What expertise and knowledge do I have, and how can I best share this with my customers? (2) Is there something I can create that will empower my consumers to connect to one another better? (3) Which medium am I most compelling with – text, audio, images, or video?

Lesson #4 – Work Your Face Off

This lesson comes from Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck.

Vaynerchuck’s not drugs, it’s drive. He wants you to work your 9-5 day job, go home and hug your spouse, kiss your baby, and then get working again from 9-2 AM on the thing you love. As he so eloquently puts it, “you’ll be bleeding out of your eyeballs at your computer.”

When you want to change the world, there’s no place or time for couch surfing Grey’s Anatomy, Wii, Scrabble, book clubs (there’s always time for 10 minute reviews on Mashable, of course), or online poker. So, be sure to pick something you are very passionate about, because there’s NO way you will work this hard at something you don’t enjoy.

Lesson #5 – Get Smart About the Tools

This lesson comes from The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg.

Editor’s Note: Tamar Weinberg is Mashable’s Director of Community.

Want the nitty gritty details of social media success? Weinberg (the Queen of Smart) has literally hundreds of great tips in this book. Some of the gems include: submitting your blog to various directories (a simple but often overlooked step), learning how to run contests on Twitter to drive traffic, how to become a power account user on the social news sites, and how to use Yahoo! Answers to create thought leadership for your brand.

So that’s the scoop. Five killer social media must-reads. This is a tech democracy we’re living in here – where the net and content overcomes traditional media gatekeeping. These 5 books are your roadmap to becoming a social media rockstar in 2010 – rock on!

More business resources from Mashable:

- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business

- 6 Must-Follow Steps for Selling in Any Economy

- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business

- HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, f4f

Reviews: Mashable, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: book review, crush it, List, Lists, six pixel of separation, social media, the new community rules, the whuffie factor, trust agents, Whuffie

Reasons Why a Double Opt in Email List is Crucial to Your Success

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:29:00 +0000

Note: We have been testing a new auto-post feature on items I've shared in google reader. The tests aren't quite working to my best intentions, since the quotes are a little too long, and the comments not coming across. I have modified this post to point out Matt's great thought, without the appearance of having stolen the entire post.

Matt Bacak’s Reasons Why a Double Opt in Email List is Crucial to Your Success: "

"If you plan on becoming a serious online marketer with a large measure of success, building a double opt in email list is something you just have to do. Perhaps you don’t know what it is, or how it works. Once you understand, the strategy is easy to implement. Unless you plan on building a list of targeted subscribers, you can’t expect to ever make massive money like many of the guru’s you have probably heard of."

In the real estate business we try so hard to get a contact that we often fail to remember that the single opt-in email supplier is a pretty low commitment

Streams May Impact E-mail, But Won't Kill It Any Time Soon

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:11:00 +0000

From Louis Gray, one of my favorite technology and communication bloggers:

Streams May Impact E-mail, But Won't Kill It Any Time Soon: "As trendy as it can be at times to say that the new social 'activity streams' are set to be the future of our communications, including most social networks and the nascent Google Wave, it is clear that e-mail has some serious life ahead of it. While many can complain about the growth of e-mail messages, the replacement of actual messages from people with simple notifications by robots, and a march toward 'In Box Zero', this form of transmission is not going to be deleted for the foreseeable future, even if it morphs to adopt more social functionality. In an intriguing discussion at last week's Defrag conference, it was suggested e-mail could tap into the social networks, and that the most adept e-mail users would have advantages over those less savvy, but nobody called for its death. In an attention-grabbing blogosphere, that's a rare thing indeed.

Tim Young of Socialcast, reflecting on the move to activity streams in many of those networks we inhabit, echoed a belief of mine, saying that as information consumers, access to more data is key to our continued growth and adaptation to a changing world. He even took a second step to say that our ability to adapt quickly will promote the best discovery artists to the head of the pack.

'Information foraging is core to our human psychology,' Young said. 'It is the energy source for our minds. We hunt and gather for information to understand and adapt to our world. Natural selection favors organisms with the best food foraging strategies. In the future, natural selection will favor people and enterprises with the best information foraging strategies.'

For the last two decades, one of the most frequent methods for finding information and distributing outward has been e-mail. E-mail, like blogging, is well known for offering the function of rich communications and longer-length missives, not restricted by the limits often found through mobile phone usage, Twitter and other sites. Unsurprisingly, a good number of e-mails are made to be sent to multiple recipients as well.

Alexander Moore of Baydin reported in a study of more than 250,000 e-mail messages (via Enron) and nearly half a million tweets, that 42 percent of e-mails are multi-recipient, contrasted with only 6 percent of tweets being for multiple recipients, but he did say our immersion in the social Web had shown signs of affecting the way we send messages.

Go to the link above for the full article. In short email is going to start look more like social media streams, and social media streams will indeed replace some emails that are meant to be more public and participatory. Early adopters may be comfortable with multiple platform communications ... will real people?

Conversation Agent: PR and Media, from Begging for to Earning Attention

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:28:00 +0000

Conversation Agent: PR and Media, from Begging for to Earning Attention:

"One of the reason why public relations firms are ill equipped to deal with bloggers and new media is that they were built to deal with traditional or mainstream media. Many agencies are still stuck in pushy mode. ....It seems to me that mainstream media companies are wrestling with the same or a similar issue. While quick sound bites and short posts are attention getting, the money is in the original and in depth reporting, which is where the value is and the resources allocated are scarce. Success with a story means that the outlet will try to exploit it as much as possible in its form - going deeper is expensive and many news organizations are backed into the commodity corner. ..."

Still playing with getting the post from reader, then sending to this blog. Would even be more fun in a wave, but then limited to only a few collaborators. The key is a great thought creator, namely that public relations as an entire industry will have to change a lot.

Note: The author contacted me and asked that I reduce the content quote a bit, which I have done.

Texas Mexican Restaurants Using Geo-Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:49:00 +0000

Testing a direct post from google reader to this blog ... thinking this will be an easier way to "star" posts that we think matter to our clients and ideas we can use for new clients.
Texas Mexican Restaurants Using Geo-Marketing: "

JoesGoes.com ~ Your Online Source for Mexican Restaurants in Texas

Texans who love Mexican restaurants have a new resource for experiencing the best Mexican cuisine in the DFW (Dallas Ft. Worth), Austin, Houston and San Antonio Metros.

JoseGoes.com is a great example of how niche sites can offer great value to consumers through geo-targeted marketing while simultaneously creating exceptional opportunities for businesses.

While this site focuses on Mexican restaurants in Texas, the concept of geo-marketing through niche sites is applicable to every type of business and every location. JoseGoes.com serves as an excellent role model for what to look for in a geo-local site and the first of more to come from those sharp folks at Rev Up Media Promotions who are also behind MyLocalLookup and BeyondTheTV.

I encourage every business to seek out and support these types of geo-targeted sites and particularly the projects Rev Up Media Promotions develops. They have a huge advantage due to their affiliation with television stations in each major metro area as I explained in the BeyondTheTV link above. If you develop Web properties, consider creating your own unique combination of niche and geographic location.

The most well established and promoted site for each metro area will grow massively in importance to businesses. It is imperative that a general metro site collaborate with these types of niche metro sites because that is how they will generate the strongest growth and visibility.

Jose Goes: Select From Texas Metros: DFW, Houston, San Antonio or Austin

HOW JOSE GOES BENEFITS CONSUMERS:

Fast and easy to use while being very useful and engaging.

Displays special offers including discounts, coupons and events – today they have $3 off entrees & buy 1 get 1 free.

Join “The Club” to receive special offers via email.

Read Jose’s and peer reviews of your local Mexican restaurant choices and add your own.

Already have a favorite restaurant? Use the search by city or by restaurant name. If they have a featured listing you can quickly find coupons, special offers, hours, what credit cards they take, a map to their location and other information. The database includes restaurants that are not featured so you can find the names, addresses and phone numbers of those too.

Delicious Mexican Recipes and How to Make Mexican Food videos on How to Make Tacos, How to Make Tamales, How to Make Enchiladas, and Healthy Mexican Food Choices and many more

They even have a great Let’s Go to the Movies section showing Top Movies at the Box Office where you can easily search by zip code to find the theaters, features and times of movies playing today. Click the link to IMDB to watch the movie trailers.

Coming soon: Jose Gear and Half Price Gift Certificates - I predict these will be VERY popular.

HOW JOSE GOES BENEFITS RESTAURANT OWNERS:

Consumers self-select by location so you know you are reaching your target audience.

Full Description of Business

Direct website link

Contact Form

Social Media Tools (over 40 social sites included)

Streaming Video (also included to all the top video sites)

Interactive Map

Driving directions

Coupons and photos

Promoted on television

Come together with other restaurants to market your restaurant business in a creative new way. If you would like to be a part of this unique opportunity, contact Jeff Palmer at 972.664.9996.

Joes Goes Texas Metro Page for Dallas

Calls for Google to Go Green for Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:25:00 +0000

Although I don't post much in the way of political rhetoric here, the events unfolding in Iran surrounding the fraudulent election are once again pointing out the importance of social media. The major media couldn't even get a handle on what was going on during the first couple days, and like many of us, were forced to watch twitter #iranelection for updates.

After 5 days of massive and sometimes violent protests some pretty amazing things:

A couple hundred Iranians are posting on twitter live updates as stories unfold
Twitter users worried that Iranians would lose the ability to communicate with the outside world, campaigned twitter to postpone a night-time system update. And twitter agreed.
Now twitter and facebook supporters are asking that Google change their logo for one day in support of Iran. Think they'll have the guts?
Some are also calling for Google to update their satellite photos so that the world can see the numbers of protesters LIVE.

Daily Dish suggests the Google Go Green request started with Mousavi himself and was passed to us via an active twitter profile in Tehran.