On Huffington Post itself, they’ve demoed their Chicago Twitter Lists model:

Hyperlocal curation of real time news is beginning to gain acceptance in the mass media. These sites will evolve into the next generation community newspaper, advertiser and bulletin boards:

(from Breaking SF News)

Twitter Lists are only the beginning to curation.

1. Best is to start with an existing Breaking News Network site.

2. First, build a Twitter List of the best local Twitter news feeds. Then build separate lists for Events, Sports, Shopping, Foodie, etc.

3. Configure each Twitter List with a widget at http://twitter.com/goodies/widget_list

4. Configure the appearance and display features

5. Configure the widget size for your Breaking News site or blog.

6. Embed the widget into the page of the Breaking News site using html cut & paste.

7. Breaking Seattle News.com has many of its categories using Twitter List widgets:

8. Breaking News sites are community resource websites that work complementary with their accompanying Twitter feeds:

9. This Community Engagement strategy positions the builder of these sites and Twitter feeds as a community media source.

Tony, the obvious benefit of Twitter Lists is to organize your Twitter stream into groups so you can focus Twitter conversations categorically. However, I see Lists as a key component on what makes Twitter a good will engine. Here are ten ways to use Twitter to build your personal brand by spreading good will:

1. Twitter Lists. Adding people you like and want to do business to your Twitter Lists is instant recognition to your network. It only takes 5 seconds per addition. Everybody wants to be on somebody’s list.
2. Reciprocate. If anybody adds you onto their list, reciprocate. Follow them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook if you aren’t already. Thank them via @ or DM. And add them to one of your lists if there is a category fit, or create a “Gratitude list” that is expressly for good will reciprocation.
3. Follow the Lists of Twitterers you want to connect with. They will see you and recognize that.
4. Retweets are also recognition. When anybody retweets your tweets, find a way to retweet their tweets back at them. Follow them if they are interesting because they already find you interesting. After all, that’s the basis of attraction in relationships.
5. Twitter Lists have made #followfriday redundant. Yet, I add those folks who #followfriday me onto the Gratitude List.
6. Use Listorious.com to find Lists you can leverage for business. For example, if you’re interested in finding all businesses on Twitter in Fremont CA, search for “fremont businesses” and you’ll find these Lists. Follow the List and follow all the businesses on that List to watch them.
7. Create an “IRL List” – all the people you know on Twitter that you have met In Real Life. At the very least, you’ll remind yourself that you met them!
8. Create Twitter Lists that your community can use. If you’re in a community based business (and many are) create categorical lists for your community, whether it is geographically based or industry based. See slideshow on how to build a community news resource in one hour. People in your community will follow community news.
9. Develop multiple Twitter accounts to expand your brand presence across different or new categories. If you’re in real estate, 1) maintain your personal account, 2) build a community news account and provide a good will community service, and 3) build a pristine real estate data and news feed that is spare on irrelevant chatter. You will build three types of networks, respectively: 1) those attracted to your personal feed; 2) community Tweeps; and 3) a Twitter feed that can be placed on others’ Twitter Lists because the content is pristine and targeted.
10. Don’t be hesitant to build a lot of Lists. If you develop multiple Twitter accounts, you get to build 20 more Lists for each account. Lists are branding engines. The more Lists you build, the more good will recognition you spread. The more recognition you give, the more you receive. Note: don’t be superficial building these Lists, be sure you have specific themes attractive to your readers.

We’re developing social media training systems together with association / corporate marketing groups and consultants who add their training content to the platform. For example, we’re working with a wine consultancy developing a national social media marketing business using the platform for “basic training” and reference for their client base.

Register for a peek at http://domusu.com/admin/first-time-users. We welcome discussion on this unique idea.

From my slideshow “Build a Dynamic Community News Resource on Twitter in One Hour”, a question came up as to why you would want to become a “news aggregator”, as if the term implied that it’s akin to being a bot. Here are the reasons why a local business person would want to “curate” news for their community:

1. “News aggregation” and “curating” are very similar terms. You need to have the epiphany that your position in the community can be just as powerful as the local newspaper (a “news aggregator”) because your social network trusts you (see slideshow Be the Media!). If you provide a community news resource with the best local Twitter feeds that your local newspaper is not providing, then your community will honor that. If you are in real estate, you will want to curate news more specific to real estate and the local markets for readers who you want to attract as clients. You make a community impact!

2. “News aggregation” is being the media! Do you like being recognized by the media? Everybody does. By creating Lists of local Twitterers, you are honoring them. They find out who you are in the community by virtue of your community media resource, and you develop an “instant” network of appreciative fans. They will follow/friend you. Isn’t that what “branding” is about?

3. News aggregation is blathering about the standard weather reports, crime news and boring 11:00 newscast stuff that local TV reports. Curating is fine tuning what you broadcast to your community by finding the best examples of good local content that is interesting to your target reader.

4. Finally, you need to maintain a personal touch to curating the news. Show that you’re in the stream by tweeting local interest topics yourself and linking to your blog posts, etc. That kind of maintenance is similar to how you approach any marketing or blogging activity.

As I mentioned before, it only takes one hour to develop a community news resource on Twitter. It’s good will community service; it’s not going to be looked upon skeptically so it won’t hurt you. I posit: why not? Just try it…

If you build a local breaking news Twitter site from this slideshow tutorial, let us know @pkitano and we’ll LIST it!

I asked on Twitter and Facebook for help (tx James & Kevin for help!). Usually this works.

Upon Googling the above code, I find out the problem is a “MySQL Injection Attack” on Wordpress blogs. Mashable documented it on September 5, but Wordpress and Feedburner forums make no mention of this.

I found the solution to the problem at this link from Andy Sowards: http://bit.ly/2Pkje9. I deleted two posts checking for a solution, and just re-uploaded them now.

This is one way social media has changed the sales process.

Traditional corporate sales forces are hired for their industry expertise. A product or service that targets the hospitality industry will seek account executives with that background. But suppose the company realizes that its service is a better fit for the financial industry. The problem is the domain expertise and social networks of hospitality industry AEs won’t transition to banks. That, in essence, is why corporations can’t react swiftly. Shifting sales and marketing focus is a common problem for companies big and small, especially internet companies. And the key to transaction execution is the direct channel between the AE and the client.

Social media has changed the sales process so that the key to the transaction may not reside in the AE / client channel, it’s finding the special intermediaries who can facilitate the transaction. Before social media, those intermediaries were hidden inside industry tubes that outsiders couldn’t penetrate. Social media (think LinkedIn and Twitter) opened these tubes. Moreover, the ideal intermediary can put together the deal more efficiently, collect a fee, and continue with their day job. They will have the domain expertise to know what they are doing, and they don’t necessarily need to be trained extensively. And most important, they will do this because the recession changed their mindset towards being more entrepreneurial to seek these kinds of opportunities.

So, what’s more profitable? A national company that has 100 full time sales staff, or a few founders working together with 100 affiliates who are found and contracted to complete the transaction for a fee? Figure in the HR costs of hiring.

What’s the moral to this observation? The recession together with social media has created a multi-tasking worker who is independent and looking to leverage themselves in as many profitable ways as possible. That’s why we see all these affiliate marketers out there plugging various teeth whitening and insurance products, but they are doing it wrong. Why? True affiliate marketing entails a highly pinpointed strategy to create transaction opportunities; very few will meet qualifications based on very specific domain expertise. Most of today’s affiliate marketers are unqualified so they spam out MLM systems that try to hook in the masses.

Affiliate marketing, although a dirty word now, is evolving online together with social media to create a new and profound business development paradigm that can be applied to enterprises. At Domus Consulting Group, we have developed operating examples of this new business model that work, and they have nothing in common with spamming or MLM.

I originally intended this slideshow for local business people who wanted a blog for marketing purposes, but didn’t have the inclination to start a blog due to writing and time commitments. After posting the slideshow, I received feedback that Posterous was a great method to create new “blogs” on a variety of topics and interests that were parallel to the principal blog. One mentioned how fast Posterous blogs were indexed by Google.