I love me some Twitter.

But alas, there are many newbies who are using Twitter the wrong way to promote “stuff”. These users actually lower the value to all other Twitter users by being of low value and generally being a nuisance by adding irrelevant “noise” to the Twitter feed.

Eventually, these accounts will be permanently blocked by Twitter users, removed by Twitter if a spammer account is reported and flagged by 3rd party spam busters like TwitChuck.

Now I suspect that a lot of these users are not really hardcore spammers (although there are those too). But rather, people who don’t understand how Twitter works and have no empathy for the people who mutually follow them.

If you want to promote your business or product on Twitter, here are some guidelines on how to do it professionally and ethically:

1. Age of your account.
Do not promote any business or product unless your account is at least 6 months old. Additionally, you should only promote a product that is relevant to your followers. Which brings us to rule 2.

2. Build a target audience per Twitter account.
You should follow and friend users with similar interests. You should build up goodwill by offering useful content that is relevant to the product you are promoting. Use a separate Twitter account if you are involved in more than 1 market niche.

3. Have a balanced ratio of friends and followers (unless you are a mega celebrity).
Spammers tend to use software scripts or robots to add thousands of followers in the hope that they will follow back. If their Tweets have no value, many people will “Unfollow” them leaving an unbalanced ratio of friends and followers. Meaning, the number of people they follow is significantly more than the number of people who follow them.

4. Join the conversation.
Another self-centered strategy that spammers use is to just have a few posts about their product or service and then just focus on adding friends and followers instead of actually joining the conversation. Communicate. Retweet good tweets (see my post on How to Retweet Like a Pro). Reply to direct messages. Join conversations using the #tag. Mention others in your tweets.

5. Avoid the hard sell terms
Don’t use a lot of spam terms like “free”, “join”, “subscribe”, “viagra”…etc. These will get flagged.

Check your Twitter account on Twitchuck to see how you stand. Here’s an example of your report:

Have you heard about the new Web 2.0 service/ plugin called Apture? I am really impressed with it and after this, you will too.

Please see this video tutorial below to learn how this page was created. Mouse over the links below to see all the other cool features Apture can add to your blog.

Now, I’ve been monitoring the Web 2.0 space for a while and I’ve seen a lot of cool services come and go. But I must say, that I am well and truly impressed with Apture.

Let’s run through a few things Apture can do. Let’s say I wanted to setup multi-media rich blog post about Apture.

First I might talk about the CEO and co-founder Tristan Harris. Try clicking on his name now. See how all the rich resource is displayed about him? I can pull information from Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter and almost any other source into that link.

Best of all, I keep my visitors on my site because they don’t leave my blog when they click on the link.

Apture also has many great features like the Amazon monetization option. So I can recommend books about blogging to my readers. When they click on the link, all the books are featured and my Amazon affiliate link is appended to them. How cool is that.

Now I can go on and on about the other features but I think you get the picture. If you have a blog or website, go ahead and add Apture now. :)

I was working on one of my Adwords campaigns recently and a friend who was looking at my spreadsheet asked me why I bother with quote marks and brackets in my Adwords campaign.

So I’m sure there may be others asking the same question.
Here’s the quick answer:

Broad Match.
This is where a keyword phrase is written as is, for example: Organic Vegetables

This is the broadest of all the match types. This match type means that your Ad will potentially be shown to anyone searching for “Organic” and “Vegetables” in their search phrase.

Example, your ad may show up if someone searched for “Organic Chemistry” or “Zombie Vegetables”.

As you can see, this phrase can get your Ad a lot of impressions but the cllicks may be low as your Ad can be shown for searches that are not relevant.

Phrase Match.
This is where a keyword phrase is enclosed by quotation marks, for example: “Organic Vegetables”

This match type means your Ad will only be shown if the search phrase contains the words “Organic Vegetables” in that order.

So for example, your Ad may appear if someone searches for “How To Grow Organic Vegetables” or “Where To Buy Organic Vegetables”.

Exact Match.
This is the strictest match type. This is where your keyword phrase is enclosed by square brackets, for example: [Organic Vegetables]

This is the most specific of the three types. In this case, your Ad will only be shown if somebody searches for “Organic Vegetables” and with no other terms.

Negative Match
Also, its is very important to specify Negative Keywords in your Ad campaign. For example, if you are selling information about “Organic Vegetables” you may want to include the negative keyword “free” so that people searching for free stuff will not see or click on your Ad.

For more information on Adwords and making profits with PPC, visit PPC Classroom 3.

I logged in to my Twitter account today discovered a new item next to my “following” and “follower” count. It says “Listed”.

I was naturally intrigued and soon discovered that its a funky new way that Twitter introduced for us to organize our Twitter feeds. It’s really timely as I was beginning to find my massive list of constantly updating Twitter feed becoming increasingly ineffective under all that volume.

What Are Twitter Lists?
Well you can think of them as “Categories” for your Twitter feeds. Instead of having one massive list, you can now break them down into as many categories as you like.

When you click on each “list” you will only see the friends you follow and even the people you don’t follow in the feed column. Yes, this way, you can keep track of topics and people without following them.

How Do You Create a List?
Well, its simple, just scroll down the sidebar and find the “New List” button.

You can create a “Public” or “Private” list. A public list can be accessed by people who visit your Twitter page and a private lists is for your eyes only. Then hit the “Create List” button.

Adding Feeds To Your Twitter List
You can do a search for a particular topic or just click on anyone on your existing feed that is relevant to your list. On that person’s Twitter page, you will find a “List” icon on the same row as the “Follow” icon.

Click on the “List” icon and select the relevant list you wish to add this feed to.

Congratulations, You’ve Created Your First Twitter List!
Now, when you click on your list, you will only see the feeds of the people you added there.

I have to applaud Twitter for adding this cool and yet very necessary feature. I know have a new dimension to my Twitter account as a way to follow topics and people more efficiently!

Desktop Applications & Twitter Lists
I’m also happy to report that desktop Twitter clients, like Seesmic Desktop (what I am using), also support Twitter Lists.

My only complaint is that the desktop lists are not synchronized with the web-based lists I create on Twitter.com. Nonetheless, I am happy to have the feature available.

My friend Jon Yeo just sent me a Google Wave invite and I started experimenting with it.

Here’s a video explaining how Google Wave works:

I must say that the project has very exciting potential. However, in practice, I have found the user interface quite a challenge. Its not as intuitive as other Web 2.0 type apps that we’ve become accustomed to like Twitter for example. To be fair, this is the beta version and it is a very massive project.

Whether the world is ready for something this powerful, is anyone’s guess.

Some of the main features I am quite excited about are:

1. Ability to embed the entire “Wave” conversation into any website and have it work as a stand alone application. This is really powerful because it essentially allows Google Wave to work anywhere and not just on Google’s own website.

2. The ability to add “robots”. This feature together with the first features allows Google Wave to be the ultimate RSS publisher for example. I can add a Twitter or Facebook robot and publish all my Twitter and Facebook updates to my blog or any webpage or vice versa.

3. Real time multimedia collaboration makes this tool a very powerful brainstorming tool. I am already toying with the idea of getting say 5 of my smartest friends and business partners on Google Wave, creating a common topic of interest and then using all the features of Google Wave to have a massive brainstorming session.

The Verdict
Yes, I am excited about Google Wave. So far, playing with the beta features indicate that the concepts can work. However, the app is very far from being ready.

Also, I am not convinced that its ready for the “mass market”. I know tech geeks like myself will love using it but I wonder if the “masses” will take the time to learn and make use of this wonderful tool.

Time will tell.

I’d like to share an update on a post I made over a year ago. Its about my on going saga of getting the word “Brian Wong” listed on Google’s search results for personal branding.

In my previous post, I talked about how I got the number one spot on Google and then lost it when I screwed up the SEO on my pages when I switched to Wordpress and then got it back again after some tweaking. Hey, we all learn from mistakes right?

Now I’m happy to report that my efforts have paid off. Today, if you type in “Brian Wong” on Google, you will see that I have the top position and have become an “authority site” for the keyword “Brian Wong”. This means that, below the search results, you will see other “sub” pages that have been indexed by Google search engine robots.

Now if you can imagine, this is not an easy task. Just imagine how many “Brian Wong’s” there are in this world!!! It took a while to get it right and so I thought I’d share a few tips on how to do this.

Why Do You Want to Get On Google?
Are you kidding? Of course its important!

Now I know that this may seem like its not for everybody. If your success does not depend on your personal brand, you might prefer to be anonymous. Even so, I would still argue that it is in your best interest to try to control the content that shows up when your name or company is “Googled”. The sooner you do it, the greater likelihood you will control it before someone else does. You never know when you will actually want to use this.

For me, as a business entrepreneur, Internet marketer and where my business success depends on my reputation and on the results I deliver, I need to stand out positively. People need to find me, find my website, trust in me and the services I provide. This is a necessity.

Remember the scene in the movie “Wanted” staring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie where the lead character Google’s his own name and nothing comes up? That symbolized the fact that he was completely unimportant.

Have you ever Googled your own name? What comes up? Who is Googling your name right now? Your clients? Your customers? Your employer and future employers?

Your value in the marketplace will be directly correlated by the search results you get on Google. If nothing shows up, the message is literally “you are not important enough to be listed on our search engine”. The sooner you get this, the sooner you will want to take action to claim your name before someone else does.

How Do You Rank High On Google’s Search Results?

Here are some selected tips for securing your online presence:

1. Secure your domain name.

Getting yourname.com is a important if you still can. It costs less than $10 a year to maintain the domain. For me, I had to purchase “brianwong.com” from a professional squatter. I paid $300 for it but its value to me is priceless. If your preferred dot com domain is taken, then you need to go for the secondary domains like “.name” or “.info” domains.

2. Secure your user name.
Go to every social network, social bookimarking website, video upload website, business networking site (
LinkedIn or Plaxo) and get your name registered. Even if you don’t intend to use it for now. Almost all of them will allow you to specify your website. Create a backlink back to your site from each of these sites.

3. On site SEO
On every webpage, use the “Title”, “Description”, “Content” and “Keyword” meta tags to display the exact information that you want. In my case, its says “Brian is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate in sharing his successes and lessons from his business ventures.”.

4. Create an “About Me” page

Make sure that the keyword (your name or company) appears in almost every page where relevant. Also, include your name on the footer of every page. e.g. Copyright 2009 <you name>

5. Create a Site Map

Now that your site is ready for indexing, create a site map and submit it to Google.

6. Use the “alt” tag in images
If you have images on your website, remember to use the “alt” tag and include your name in it.

7. Backlinks from Sites That Are Ranked on Google

Get other websites that are already ranked to link back to you. Here’s a simple example of how you can do this. You could provide a testimonial for a reputable product that is going to be promoted heavily. Ask for a link back to your website. Win-win because the product owner gets a verifiable testimonial and you get a valuable backlink.

8. Start a Wordpress Blog
One of the easiest ways to get an effective online presence is to install a Wordpress blog. You can create the onsite SEO tweaks above easily with the many free Wordpress plugins and it makes it easy to submit your content to Google, blog directories and RSS directories. Here’s a link to a list of some of my favorite Wordpress Plugins.

Finally, if you need more information about Search Engine Optimization, I recommend The SEO Book by Aron Wall. It’s the only book that I have on SEO. And that’s because it has everything you need to know about optimizing your website for search engines.

Ever since the Apple Keynote address for the iPhone which saw Steve jobs being single-handedly responsible for an immediate 30% jump in stock price, we’ve come to expect amazing things at these Apple “keynote” events.

Every year, in the run up to these events, the market is whipped into a frenzy! Rumors spread across the net from blog to blog like wild fire. Apple fans (including myself) brace for anticipated awesomeness! And to Apple’s credit, they seem to always manage to deliver some kind of awesome! (most of the time)

So what actually happens at these events? For those of you who have never seen an Apple Keynote address, you can watch the entire hour presentation at www.Apple.com or you can just watch this video for a quick summary:

By the way, this is a marvelous example of how Neuro Linguistic Programming can be used to boost sales and brand perception. I’m not sure whether its deliberate or otherwise but its a great example if you’re into NLP.

Imagine a pen that allows you to turn everything you write on your notepad into a digital version on your computer. In addition, it records all the audio at the time of writing. Wherever you tap on your notes, the audio plays back at the point in time. Well that’s exactly what the new Pulse Smartpen does and much more.

Here’s an unboxing video I made when I first got it:

Here’s a video of the setup process which was easy and fun:

Aside from the basic function of transcribing your notes and recording your voice, the pen is also a computer. It can perform instant language translation, mathematical calculations and even be a digital piano based on a keyboard that you draw on paper! There’s even an app store planned so developers can create future applications for the “pen computer” platform.

Here are some practical uses for the pen:

1. The device is perfect for lecture/ seminar type events where you can capture what is being spoken as you write your notes. When you need to refer to it later, you get a perfect recall.
2. Diary/ Journal. How about adding your own voice/ thoughts as you journal in your notes. These notes can then be stored on your diary/ computer and you can even do a search for words that you have written. Now your notes can capture your thoughts and emotion at the time for recall later.
3. Present an idea on paper and send it to someone else to view as though you have just presented it on a whiteboard in front of the other person. The smartpen allows you to upload videos of your recording (called “pencasts”) and share them with friends.

The thing I like most about this pen is that it removes the need to bring a laptop along to take notes or input data. There are times now when I can just use the Smartpen, the notepad and my iPod Touch and leave the laptop at home.

I’m loving my new Pulse Smartpen and I think technology like this will change the way our kids study and learn.

So my Maxtor OneTouch III died today. 300 GB of data down the drain. Although I use it for archiving non-critical data, I still feel a deep lost for the information stored on that device!

After some research, I realize that hard-drives are really disasters waiting to happen.

Watch this informative video to see what I mean:

They are freakin’ sensitive devices waiting to break down!

The moral of the story? Backup, backup, backup!

Now my main critical data is on my computer and I use Apple’s Time Machine to backup everything to my 500 GB Apple Time Capsule. Now, I’m wondering whether that is sufficient and if my backup disk needs a backup disk??? *sigh*.

If you’re reading this, I’m actually interested to know know what is your backup plan?

If you don’t have one….BACKUP NOW! This post might be the reminder you need to backup!

Technorati Tags: backup

Tony Robbins was one of the main teachers who helped me change my life for the better. To date, his live seminars are still the best I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve been to a lot).

Why do I think his live seminars are so good? Well I believe his greatest skill is get individuals to change their state instantly. His live seminars are a proactive event rather than a one way communication. He gets you to “experience” the actual shifts in emotions and beliefs that is required for you to effectively change your life and get what you want.

Once you experience these subtle “state changes” as he calls it, and recognize the way to do it yourself, you can then repeat them over and over again in your life to enable change to happen. Its all about creating life long habits of success to get the life that you want. Its not something you do once that get you results, but rather its the habits and rituals that you adopt that lead to results.

Here’s a great video that I came across to give you an idea of what goes on in his seminars. Hope you get some value out of it: