LifeTips SEO Content Blog

Awkward Twitter Moments: The Series? (yes, if this sort of thing continues to happen)

Holly Bauer — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:26:00 -0400

As of late, I’ve begun to get over my fear of social media. Ok, maybe “fear” is a little melodramatic… let’s go with “discomfort.”

It’s not the idea of online networking that I found unsettling; in fact, the summer before I started college in 2005 (back when Facebook was for college students only), I was dying to get my college-issued .edu email address so badly that I went to Emerson’s website and tried typing in variations of my name and default passwords, just hoping that an email address would materialize and subsequently allow me to join Facebook (a little sad yes, but don’t judge me—admitting this makes me vulnerable).

I also remember the day when, upon logging in, my good friend Facebook asked me, “What are you doing right now?” Well, looking over my shoulder and wondering, “Is the voice coming from inside the house?”

And then the updates started happening. At first, they just sort of awkwardlytrickled in and hesitated to reveal much detail. “Person O’ Personson is at the library.” “That weird guy from high school who picked his nose a lot is in class.”

It didn’t take long for these updates to become both more detailed and more frequent. “Dude McDudeBro is going to class, then might get some coffee, then has a podiatrist’s appointment, then will do homework and probably eat something and then go to bed.” At this point, however, the updates were still about pretty superficial things.

But then they started to look like this: “Something something isn’t sure what to do about life right now,” or, and this one’s my personal favorite, “Someone someoneton is.” Whoa. That just got real.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that I’ve always assumed that nothing that I do is interesting enough to justify broadcasting it over the Tubes. I’ve since come to realize that, yes, Facebook, Twitter, etc. can be effective networking and marketing tools, which is one of the main reasons why I feel more comfortable with them now (although I still don’t have a personal Twitter account).

A few days ago, I ran into a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a while. She Twitters frequently and links her Twitter account to her Facebook, so I see the updates. The day before I ran into her out in the world, her updates went something like this: “Someone someone’s world just fell apart,” and then, “…is trying to get my mind off of this,” and finally, “…is done with men forever.” Based on these updates and subsequent comments from her friends (“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Let me know if you need anything”), I deduced that she and her boyfriend had broken up.

So I run into her and start, as many people do, by asking, “How are you?” I did this even though I knew what had happened and that she wasn’t happy about it. Her reply: “Oh, well, Blah and I broke up.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply. Should I pretend that I had no idea? It felt a little creepy that I knew that, but she put the information out there, so why should I worry? But if I acted like I knew nothing about it, wouldn’t that be lying?

I decided to take the latter option and feign ignorance, and yes, as it turned out, it did feel like lying; I felt dirty all over and it was all Twitter’s fault.

So take this as a warning, readers. If you haven’t already faced an awkward, Facebook/Twitter-induced personal interaction, be prepared, because it’s going to happen sooner or later. Just rest assured that it is possible to pick up the pieces and move on.

How Can BING Impact Online Marketing Strategy?

amanda smyth — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:10:00 -0400

These are the questions on everyone's mind. What is BING? How will it affect my SEO strategy? What does this mean to all of the hard work I have put into my content and optimization?

Here are some of the guidelines we have seen pop up so far with regard to Bing and how it categorizes search listings.

First of all, there is much talk that Bing, as an engine, is smarter or "more aware" than Google bots are. (Oh my God, this is it. The robots have become self-aware. This is my ultimate nightmare.)

Bing appears to not only "find" your content, but it makes intelligent decisions regarding what your content is, which are driven by a slightly different set of rules than Google uses. (Be aware that this is speculation. I have no hard facts or proof.)

Bing appears to weigh the "age" of a domain more heavily. The longer you have been around, the more street cred you carry as a website.

Bing likes content. But not just some content, loads of content. Bing appears to respond better to pages with at least 300 words of text or more.

Google has not placed as much weight on bloggers in the past. It is said that Bing is a friend of bloggers and may weigh blogs quite heavily.

Bing appears to like great titles that are directly relevant to your content. So don't phone in your titles, you lazy shlub.

Keep your URL's simple. Bing hasn't got time to read your URL manifestos. He is a busy guy with places to be.

Lastly, Bing likes outbound links, contrary to Google that has, in the past, prevented websites from posting too many outbound links out of fear of lowering their rank.

Make sure your website allows MSNbots to crawl your content. If you don't know how to do this, go find your IT guy. Those guys are magical.

The Millionth Word in the English Language Is…

Jamison Cush — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:23:00 -0400

It only took 1,500 years, but the English language welcomed its one-millionth word this week with the addition of “web 2.0” to its already crammed lexicon. As someone who makes a living out of words, I wholeheartedly welcome the term, and hope that someone, someday, can actually tell me what it means.

I don’t begrudge “web 2.0” for being meaningless. Having a meaning isn’t necessarily a precondition for acceptance into the English language anymore. As someone who has worked in a corporate environment, I’ve heard plenty of meaningless words. For example, can someone can tell me the definitive definition of “best practices,” “synergistic energy” and what exactly “turn-key” describes?

Before you throw the party, understand how this milestone came about. The Global Language Monitor, a Texas-based group of academics, that “documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English” in their spare time, came up with an algorithm to scan thousands of print and online publications. Once said algorithm sees a group of jumbled letters occur 25,000 times in a search, it is designated as a word.

I’m guessing by that standard, “John and Kate Plus 8” will be word 1,000,001 based on mentions in US Weekly alone.

Twitter ID Theft

Jamison Cush — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:52:00 -0400

Image-conscious celebrities have long tried to control their personal brand. However, the rise of the internet has made that job much tougher. A few years ago, publicists were scrambling to snatch up and register celebrity domain names (for example, “britneyspears.com”), sometimes paying off industrious domain squatters who had beaten them to the punch. Now, that battle is playing out all over again on Twitter.

Exhibit A: Pop superstar Kanye West is extremely upset at the microblogging service for allowing an imposter to claim the Twitter handle “KanyeWest.” AP reported (via TwitterBacklash) that the real Kanye posted an exceptive-filled essay on his blog (in all caps!) lambasting “THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER” because they “KNOW I DON'T HAVE A (ed: bad word) TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL…”

Kanye then demanded Twitter suspend “kanyewest” and similar accounts; a request Twitter was happy to oblige.

Exhibit B: This one may not have the same happy ending. The AP also reports that St. Louis Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa is suing Twitter, “claiming an unauthorized page using his name damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress.” In this particular case, the imposter tweeted comments disrespectful to diseased ex-players. Though the account has since been deactivated, the lawsuit claims the comments damaged La Russa’s trademark rights.

For its part, Twitter is apparently attempting to implement account verification, according to co-founder Biz Stone. The question is, how can they possibly implement that system?

The bottom line is for all the publicists and would-be celebs reading this, please go register your official Twitter account before some prankster with an axe to grind does it for you.

As for me… I kind of hope someone poses as me on Twitter. It would make me feel important.

Tweet Pressure

Melanie Yarbrough — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:13:00 -0400

I have recently undergone a re-evaluation of my internet identity. Almost as important (arguably more important) as one’s real life identity, internet identity is exciting in its malleability. Two years ago, as I was ushered around the Emerson College campus, my tour guide informed us that soon we’d be able to access the Emerson’s WiFi as far into the Common as the gazebo. I was stoked. I envisioned myself lying in the grass, my computer in front of me, attaching the latest short story I’d written in an email and sending it out to all of the literary magazines eager to publish me. At that point in time, this, in addition to the occasional Facebook visit, was the extent of my internet usage. This fact, and past, dark experiences of having my time wasted, contributed to my initial resistance to Twitter. Even now, after my resistance has waned a bit meaning I have an account that I update more than once every six months), the little byline that pops up when you search “Twitter” on Google, “What are you doing right now?” makes me uneasy. At first, I didn’t see the point. “Twitter is nothing more than Facebook updates” is a sentence that I’ve said more times than I can count. Generally annoyed by information that is useless to me and unnecessarily shared, I saw Twitter as just another way for my generation to destroy whatever respect we’ve gained.

What turned it around? Curiosity. What else? I initially signed up when my sister, on the verge of having a baby, and my brother-in-law insisted that I stay updated on the progress of her labor via Twitter. I guess you could say the miracle of birth got my foot in the door, but it was the consistent emails (“So-and-so is now following you on Twitter!”) that finally nudged me to update and follow my friends’ accounts. I also have a little to owe to the blog post by one of my fellow ideaLaunch-ers, Brindey Weber, and her blogpost, which sparked my interest even more by revealing the practical uses of the site. I tend to stubbornly boycott things that the masses support (i.e. Twilight), so realizing that Twitter can be used as a launching pad to other things rather than solely for the point of tweeting/Facebook-status-updates opened my eyes (and online heart) to new possibilities. One of my first return tweets (a term that still makes me cringe because it sounds like it’s referencing drug use) was something along the lines of “Melanie Yarbrough forgot Twitter existed.” I stick by my initial argument that the majority of tweeters (including myself, most times) are sharing less-than-necessary information. And though I haven’t quite reached the point of text messaging my tweets to the website, I couldn't go much longer resisting something even God uses. That will not be the case if he ever reads Twilight.

News Agencies Clamp Down on Social Networking

Jamison Cush — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:43:00 -0400

Faced with an online culture that promotes openness, sharing and expression, news organizations are now scrambling to restrict the online Twitter, blogging and Facebook habits of staffers. According to various industry trackers, big publishers like The New York Times, Washington Post and Bloomberg have all informed employees to watch it when it comes to Web 2.0.

For example, according to LA Observed, Washington Post reporters were told via memo to, “Consult your editor before “connecting” to or “friending” any reporting contacts who may need to be treated as confidential sources.”

Bloomberg employees can no longer “publish Web sites, blogs other online journals that discuss companies, people or topics covered by Bloomberg News…” according to Valleywag.

The New York Observer (via Valleywag) claimed that New York Times editor Bill Keller opened a recent newsroom address by warning attendees not to tweet the proceedings:

Before we get going, I'm going to say something I perhaps should have said Monday, when we did our digital update in this auditorium...You wouldn't Twitter something you overheard at the coffee cart without asking. You wouldn't Twitter the Page One meeting (although it would probably get you thousands of followers.) So I'd be grateful if you would lay down your Blackberries and iPhones, and treat this as a conversation among colleagues.

It will be interesting to see if this crackdown results in any high profile violations and terminations. The whole crackdown reminds me a bit of how reluctant the film and music industries were to embrace new technologies and distribution methods like Napster and bit torrent.

Of course, “news” is a less tangible product than a song or film, but if authenticity and transparency are driving force behind success in the blogosphere and social media realm, how narrow is the vision of media outlets trying to rein it in?

LifeTips Books Coming to Book Stores Near You!

amanda smyth — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:13:00 -0400

LifeTips is proud to announce that our LifeTips Book Series will now be featured in stores soon! Up until now, we have offered our 40+ titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders and LifeTips websites, however, due to increasing demand, we will now be offering our books for in-store purchase through various retailers. We are currently offering our books through Porter Square Books in Somerville, MA and Book Review in Huntington, NY. And our list of participating bookstores is growing by the day.

Congratulations to our most recently published authors on their latest book sales!

101 English Garden Tips by Sheri Ann Richerson

101 Author Tips to Creating a Successful Book Campaign by PJ Campbell

and

101 Tips on Healthy Eating, Naturally by Emily Davidson

Stay tuned for more book updates as Holly and Amanda take the book publishing world by storm!

We also encourage you to send all book proposals to Holly@LifeTips.com and Amanda@LifeTips.com.

Writer's Call - 5/14/09

amanda smyth — Mon, 18 May 2009 06:10:00 -0400

For any Site Gurus, authors or those interested in either of these programs, Amanda Smyth and Carolyn McKibbin hosted the Monthly Writer's Call for May. The mp3 recording of the call is available on your main guru page after you've signed in. You will see listed on the left hand side of the page "mp3 Recordings," and for anyone who missed the call, you can listen to the recording here.

We covered topics ranging from "What the Site Guru Program is" to "how the Book Department is changing for the better." We also covered many FAQ's such as "How do I track my Chitika payments" and "how does the Site Guru Program benefit me?"

If you have any further questions about the Site Guru Program or the Book Department, you can email me at Amanda@LifeTips.com or for technical book publishing questions, you can email Holly Bauer at Holly@LifeTips.com.

And don't forget to follow us on Twitter for job posting updates!

Amanda is LifeTipsEditor

Holly is LifeTipsBooks

Carolyn is LifeTipsLady

Some super-fun, grammar-related ramblings from the Book Department

Holly Bauer — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:47:00 -0400

I was just browsing the archives of the LifeTips blog and noticed a post by my predecessor, Raph, entitled, "The Rocket Science of English, Part 1: Making Words Plural and Possessive." The inclusion of the modifier, "Part 1," suggests that this post was intended to mark the beginning of a series; however, it looks like Raph never got around to Parts 2 through howevermanyhaveyou. So, for the sake of continuity (and because I'm a little bit obsessive [and by "a little bit," I mean suuuuper] and you can't, just can't, have a Part 1 without a Part 2 since the lack of a Part 2 makes the "Part 1" description unnecessary), I've decided to contribute the missing second installment.

Check back next week, as I tackle the ever-vexing issue of pronoun contractions versus possessive pronouns.

Get excited.

What to Do When Google Fails?

Jamison Cush — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:02:00 -0400

GOOGLE DIED YESTERDAY! Or, at least acted really sluggish and crashed for a sampling of users early yesterday. Looking at the headlines of the incident, one would think that the Four Horsemen were gearing up for a trot.

First, the story. According to the Official Google Blog, an internal error resulted in 14% of user web traffic being rerouted through Asia. This slowed things down a bit. That’s it. The problem was identified and fixed within an hour. Urs Hoelzle, SVP of Google Operations offered his apologies, claiming, “We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again.”

Now, the inappropriate overreaction:

Reuters: Google Blackout: The Fallout (ed: What, like after a world-ending atomic blast?)
Computerworld: Google Down! (ed: RUN!)
Hispanic Business: Google Down, World Stands Still? Google Outage Shows Site's Ubiquity, Our Overdependence (ed: To answer the question, no, the world didn’t stand still.)

And Twitter… Oh boy. It was on fire with #googlefail tweets. Or, should I say is on fire. Some people apparently still think Google is down a full 24 hours after the problem was corrected.

So to answer the question posed by the title: What does one do when Google fails? Apparently, complain about it on Twitter and write hilariously over-the-top headlines.

What should one do when Google fails? Use Yahoo.

Don’t Touch That “Submit” Button! (Before Reading These Tips.)

carolyn mckibbin — Thu, 14 May 2009 08:46:00 -0400

Tips for self-editing:

1. Proofread! Please don’t ever, ever submit a tip without reading it first. Bonus: Read it out loud to be sure it sounds right.

2. Spell check. Those little red squiggly lines mean you misspelled a word.

3. Did you use the required keyword? Did you buffer it with a few additional keywords?

4. Don’t forget to fill in the question, mobile and meta description fields.

5. Did you give your tip a title? Did you capitalize all important non-prepositional words?

6. And finally, are you considering a tattoo? Think before you ink.

Writing in a down economy: actually not so bad

Elizabeth Ress — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:36:00 -0400

I'm about to graduate from college with a degree in journalism.
...I'll wait for The Face. I've been getting The Face – The "You
Poor, Misguided Child" Face – since I started telling people I wanted
to be a journalist when I was in the seventh grade. And while the
economic recession and the threat of a collapsed Boston Globe mean
this dreaded expression now packs an even more pointed air of pity,
I’m generally immune to it. I’ve been practicing the “Why I want to
be a writer” explanation since adolescence, and I’ve been planning for
post-graduate poverty since almost as young. The surprise now isn’t
that it’s going to be a struggle; it’s that everyone else is
struggling, too.

My just-as-jobless fellow graduates who chose more “practical” career
paths expected to fall into $50K+ salaries immediately after school.
I’ve been preparing my plan Bs, Cs and so forth for several years.
Finding alternatives or supplements to permanent employment, like
freelance writing and editing work, is common sense to a College of
Communication student, while my School of Management counterparts were
really stumped when recruiters didn’t flock to campus like usual.

While I won't pretend to feel good about graduating in The Great
Depression 2.0, I do feel good about graduating with a degree in
journalism. And I feel bad for those poor, misguided finance majors.

Dude Tweets with His Mind!

Jamison Cush — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:07:00 -0400

Fans of Twitter laud the micro blogging site it for its ability to clue individuals in on what’s happening “now” and for its “real time” analysis of trends so current, they aren’t even trendy yet.

And Adam Wilson trumped them all this earlier this month with a tweet so “in the now,” he completely bypassed typing it… the tweet went out straight from his mind to the Twitteratti masses.

It should be mentioned that Adam Wilson is a biomedical engineering doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin Madison researching technology that could one day aid individuals who otherwise cannot communicate, but it’s hard to get past the the-future-is-now-and-it’s-so-freakin-cool factor.

The tweet in question was 23 characters long and read, “using EEG to send tweet.” In reality, the process is still slow and clunky, with users strapping a brain monitor on and crafting a message letter by letter from an alphabet flashing on a computer screen.

In a release, Wilson further explained how the technology worked: "The way this works is that all the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually. And what your brain does is, if you're looking at the 'R' on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the 'R' flashes, your brain says, 'Hey, wait a minute. Something's different about what I was just paying attention to.' And you see a momentary change in brain activity."

Click to see Wilson’s mind reader in action.

Advances in medical technology aside, it’s notable how Twitter lent itself to the promotion of a mind reading device. Critics often blast Twitter as a collection of unfiltered musings containing nothing of value. As ESPN’s Bill Simmons so bluntly put it, the Twitterati’s mindset toward writing can be summed up as, “’here are my half-baked thoughts about absolutely anything and I'm not even going to attempt to entertain you.’"

With that thought, perhaps it’s time to stop describing Twitter as “real-time” and start touting it as a peek into the collective mind of the Internet.

(Image courtesy of UW-Madison)

ideaLaunch Is Hiring an SEO Specialist!

carolyn mckibbin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:04:00 -0400

See our posting on Craigslist. Email resume and cover letter to Carolyn@ideaLaunch.com.

Age Statistics Reveal Facebook No Longer Cool

Jamison Cush — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:45:00 -0400

Conventional teen wisdom: once your parents embrace something, it is no longer cool. So, inspired by a recent Facebook friend request from my mother, I am boldly declaring on this blog that Facebook is so over.

With Facebook’s rapid growth, (More than 200 million active users), it was only a matter of time before it reached a critical mass and spread to the squares… and even the technology-impaired, like my mother.

The numbers back this up. According to the Inside Facebook blog, the number of Americans over 35 on Facebook has nearly doubled in the past two months alone, now compromising 30% of users. Of those, the fastest growing demographic is women over 55. Pulling back a bit, there are now more users old enough to have kids (ages 26-65) than there are kids (ages 13-25 – Facebook forbids users younger than 13) on Facebook.

Will the adult presence on Facebook have a chilling effect on the lewd behavior conventional wisdom says teens chronicle online? Perhaps. And if it’s no longer safe for a teen to post compromising photos of alcohol consumption and obscenity filled wall-postings, where will they turn for their daily debauchery? Twitter perhaps?

Perhaps not, according to Reuters’ MediaFile, Twitter’s recent rise in popularity is due to adults:

But Twitter devotees are grayer than one might expect: The majority of Twitter’s roughly 10 million unique Web site visitors worldwide in February were 35 years old or older, according to comScore.

In the U.S, 10 percent of Twitter users were between 55 and 64, nearly the same amount of users as those between 18 and 24, which accounted for 10.6 percent of the total.

With the squares taking over Facebook and Twitter, maybe social media take a page from fashion and recycle old trends. Welcome back, Friendster.