Promote My Site

The Twitter 2K Barrier

Don — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Many people become frustrated when they hit the 2,000 following barrier in Twitter. It's a limit imposed by Twitter that few people know about when they
start but most will run into. In short, it's an anti-spam device by Twitter. You can follow up to 1,000 people in a day, until you've followed 2,000 people.
After 2,000, you can only follow 10% more people than are already following you.< [...]

Lt_Draper Died so That Others Might Live

ltdraper — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

A number of people have noticed that the Lt_Draper Twitter account is now sporting the Who Goes There Owl. In other
words, it was suspended by Twitter for "breaking the rules." We'll point out that we've never done anything that is against Twitter's Terms of Service, but according to their terms, "We reserve the right, in accordance with any applicable laws,
to refuse service to anyone for an [...]

Twitter Following / Unfollowing is Broken

ltdraper — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

It's not us! Twitter is currently unable to process follow and unfollow requests. Or perhaps they'll show up after a while. As of this afternoon, if you click follow on someone's profile it will say you're following them, until you click refresh in which case it will say you're not following them.

So yeah, our software hasn't added any users for you today. At least it was a computer that found that out instead of you spending your time on it.

We [...]

Stupid Twitter Tricks to Get Your Account Suspended

ltdraper — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I don't know how many times I've said this, but I'll say it again. Don't use Twitter automation on an account that you can't
afford to lose. If it's an account that you're personally invested in you shouldn't play with it. Don't bet something
you can't afford to lose.

With that said, getting suspended on Twitter is not as nearly as common as some people would have you believe. Out of a [...]

The Number One Complaint About Our Software

ltdraper — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

We haven't had too many complaints about our service, but the most frequent complaint we get seems to be "Your software works too well!"

A lot of people have been surprised at how many followers they pick up, even with the free trial. The average seems to be about 1,000
new followers over the course of a week. For a few people, this has been enough to decide they don't want any more.

The [...]

Add Twitter Followers Without Whale Watching

ltdraper — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Are you wasting your days whale watching? No, I don't mean spending time on vacation. I mean that special brand of fun you can only have
when Twitter is acting completely out of sorts like it has all afternoon today. Half the time a page load times out. A few times they've
even put up the "Twitter is over capacity message" but haven't even served up a fail whale.

We're Used to It

[...]

How Many Twitter Followers Would You Like?

ltdraper — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:00:00 +0100

How would you like to add several hundred twitter followers every day, forever? Without adding any additional work to your day? Without
installing any software? Just put it on autopilot and walk away?

If that's an interesting proposition, you should read through this entire article.

New Twitter Limits

A while back, Twitter published some limits on following people on
Twitter. Th [...]

Digg to Partner with Promote My Site

ltdraper — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0100

We are very pleased to announce that Digg and Promote My Site will be partnering to provide Digg's next generation of power user tools. This intiative represents
a change in direction for Digg and will be a significiant benefit to the internet marketing community.

Kevin Rose may have said "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. In the past we've taken the postion that power users and marketers [...]

Auto DMs on Twitter are Just Fine

Don — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0100

The latest meme in the Twittersphere has been a complaint about people that use services such as Tweet Later to send automated thank you notes to new followers on Twitter. SocialToo took it so seriously
that they dropped that capability from their service. Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund, and
Tim Walker have all written on the subject. In fact, probably hundreds
of bloggers have written on t [...]

How to Get a New IP Address

Don — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:00:00 +0100

I'm not saying this has happened to you, but if you spend much time at all promoting your site in social media, eventually you're going to need a new ip address. Maybe the 20-something sysadmin was in a bad mood and was feeling the need for a power trip, or maybe you made a mistake and pushed the envelope just a little too far. But getting banned on most social networks means that t [...]

Use Digg Analytics to Digg the Top 100 Without Friending Them

Don — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:00:00 +0100

I'm going to propose something rather radical. You should get rid of most of your friends on social media sites that you're targeting to promote your site.

We've talked about how you should stop shouting on Digg. But you can take it one step further. Most social media sites now discount the value of a vote from a friend. While they encouraged everybody to build up friend lists through the [...]

Bad News for Twitter

Don — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:00:00 +0100

While the sub-prime mortage mess has gotten a lot of press about the excess of sheer idiocy and greed in certain financial institutions,
the second great VC funded dotcom bubble has been every bit as crazy and yet receives little coverage. Sure, the amount of money wasted
doesn't even remotely approach what's going on in the broader markets, but somehow this business got away from counting revenue and st [...]

Social Voting Exchanges

Don — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:00:00 +0100

Last August we did a post on Voting Rings in Social Networks. At the
time there were a number of sites trying to cater to people that wanted to exchange votes with other social network users. The "industry" has
changed quite a bit since then, and it bears re-examination.

First, let's define what we mean by a vote exchange site. These are websites that allow their users to "trade" t [...]

Getting to the Front Page and Other Places in Social Media

Don — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:00:00 +0100

What exactly does a social media professional do when they're shepherding a story to the front page of a news site? Aside from all of the other
support activities that surround having strong profiles, being an active member in the community, and building off site relationships
with as many people as they can, the tactics for getting to the front page really just consist of:

Prepare the article. T [...]

A Very Cute Social Media Trick

Don — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0100

When you get past all the slick used car salesman drivel over at the Warrior Forum, once in a while you can find some real gems.

Go read that post. The strategy is pretty simple, but it illustrates how you can use automation to save yourself a lot of time and still use social media the way it was meant to be used. There aren't any scripts or anything even remotely unethical going on, yet he sho [...]

The Real Treasure in Digg

ltdraper — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0100

Most people that talk about strategies for using analytics on Digg and other social networks are after the holy grail of a front page. I think that's misguided.

The Front Page Can Rock

First, let's talk about the benefits of a front page.

Traffic - A ton of it. A front page on Digg can crush your server. You'll get a ton of people to see your site.
Rankings - The scuttlebutt in SEO [...]

Has Digg Gone Phishing?

Don — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0100

Those of you who have been with us for a while remember the good old days of Digg (last summer) when all you needed was a good greasemonkey script and you could click your way to Digg riches. My have times changed. N [...]

Digg Analytics Can Retrieve the Friends of Banned Users

Don — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0100

Before Digg went on its banning rampage, they had a little bug. If you had friended someone that had their account banned, you'd get an error when you clicked on the "remove friend" button in their interface. If one of your friends were banned, you couldn't remove them.

That wasn't such a big deal when bannings were few and far between, but with the recent spate of bannings Digg had created a bit of [...]

Digg Analytics and the PageRank of Powerful Profiles

Don — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0100

We've talked about finding profiles on Digg that have Toolbar PageRank to pass. It's one of the criteria for finding an Interesting Digger. But how many Digg profiles are out there that have positive Toolbar Page Rank?

The answer is quite a few, even after you get past the Top 1000 Diggers:

Page RankCount
636
526
4361
3906
21,501
11,546
Total4,376

This is based on an [...]

Stop Shouting on Digg

Don — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0100

I can't tell you how many times I've seen messages like this on the profile page of a Digg user:Add me as your friend. I'll digg your shouts if you digg mine. I'm an active digger and I'm always looking for people to reciprocate shares/shouts. Active diggers only please.

There's only one small problem with this. Votes from shouts are mostly useless.

Votes from your friends are heavily discounted. [...]