At first it will be tedious and mundane to add people to lists you have made friends with on Facebook; however, it will be worth your wild going forward with all that you do on Facebook. You can create lists such as; “people I work with”, “online friends” or “friends and family”. These lists can become a great networking tool and help you target the exact people you want to share various content, events, or to even have a peek at what their up to without having to sort through your uncategorized newsfeed.

Here’s how you can create your Facebook Lists Today:

1. Once logged into Facebook you will want to go to the top left where it shows the shadow of a person (where it shows people who want to be friends with you) and click on it. A drop down will appear and you will want to click on the link “Find Your Friends”.

2. After clicking on “Find Your Friends” a new page will appear with a button close to the right-hand side that reads, “Create a list”.

3. Click the button “Create a List” and a popup of all of your friends and pages that you have liked will appear. At the top you can name your list and then click on the faces of your friends that you would like to add to the list – you are able to add the same people to a variety of lists if you choose. – When you have added the people to fit the list, click on the button “create list”.

4. Now that your Facebook lists have been created go to the left column on your newsfeed and click on “friends” to see the list of your lists. When you click on the name of your chosen list – the people you added to the list will be seen in your newsfeed. P.S. You can create Facebook Lists for your pages that you own or are admin to as well.

Facebook Lists can serve a great purpose when you want to see what is happening with your friends and family. It’s an easy way to target events, and will save you tons of time from clicking friends one by one. Make your Facebook lists today and take control over who you want to see in your newsfeed, when you want to.

The implosion of Digg is happening. It is an unstoppable conclusion to events that have been in motion since last week and will continue until the full implosion event similar to to the final shrinking of the universe.

Then, today, it changed. Digg’s front page algorithm started resembling the old promotion algorithm. Familiar sources absent from the Digg front page for a week came back.

Everything went better than expected.

As promised, time-stamps have returned to stories, including how long a story has been in Top News and when a story was actually submitted.

The axles seem to be breaking less and less.

Users are almost frolicking, submitting content to Digg rather than Reddit, Mixx, and anywhere else that would have them.

Today, things almost seem normal for Digg.

We’ll monitor the situation. There’s still a certain level of trepidation. Could it be real? Only time will tell.

UPDATE: Kevin Rose’ Reply – “We still have work to do — expect to see ongoing tweaks to the promotion algorithm, upcoming coming back, and a few other fixes. It’s going to be another week or two, but know that we are working hard on these problems. Thank you.”

Spam has made it to the front page from time to time as they tweak the algorithm. Moderation is swift and spam stories are being removed shortly after making Top News.

Historical domain data seems to have been erased (as Rose eluded to when alpha testing was announced) which is allowing domains such as Splice Today to hit the front page when the old Digg ignored it for nearly 2 years. Those who may have lost hope in the past can give it another shot.

Stories are hitting more quickly, often in less than an hour, but other stories are still hitting even after 24 hours.

Day 1 of Digg V4.1 seems to be a move in the right direction.

A new CEO. Kevin Rose making promises of upcoming changes. A brand new ox-related error page. Things are looking up for Digg.

Then again, they couldn’t look any worse than they have been for the last few days.

Several things have happened today.

• Digg announced its new CEO
• Kevin Rose announced upcoming changes to Digg
• Reddit has not broken double-digit front page stories on Digg today (yet).

While all of this may be humorous and somewhat sad, the first quote by the new Digg CEO is possibly telling as it’s the first time anyone at Digg acknowledged “content curation” as a need at Digg.

“The launch of version 4 was a big moment for Digg and I believe in the potential of this new platform. There is so much innovation yet to come — being the best in the world at curating news means solving the information overload we all experience every day. The Digg team has already made great strides in this direction and there is much more ahead. I’m excited to join such a talented team and such a vibrant Digg community.”

Is this double-speak for “our publisher-driven algorithm is going to be force-fed to you as the content curator,” or is he really listening to MrBabyMan’s plea?

Only time will tell.

After getting 20 stories to the front page of Digg through their publisher’s account (often with less than 30 Diggs prior to promotion), Mashable finally seems to have struck out. There’s a story that has nearly 200 Diggs at the 11 hour mark. Does this mean that Digg is finally being fair with its algorithm, or is there a certain level of mysterious timing with this particular story not hitting:

Wait, NOW you’re going to make Mashable get more than 20 Diggs before hitting the front page? Come on, Digg. The only thing you have going for you right now is consistency.

6 publishers and 1 “celebrity” have controlled the Digg Top News section for the past 3 days. This story over at Media Caffeine called Digg: The Broken Covenant (aka Selling Out to “The Man”) gives a clear indication that the shortcomings of Digg v4 go well beyond the bugs, beyond the fake positive press, and beyond the end of content curation.

It’s uglier than we thought.

UPDATE 2: New Digg is Down.

UPDATE 1: New Digg is Live.

People announce that they’re having a special day on Twitter all the time. They mention birthdays, travel days, and special events. It’s Twitter. It’s lifestreaming at its finest.

When Digg CEO mentions a “bigg day” people watch and wait to see what exactly he means by that.

Of course, the question that many in the Digg community will be asking is whether or not his Tweet means that Digg V4.0 is rolling out today.

Two things should be noted about Rose. He loves Twitter and he often uses it to mess with his peers. Case in point occurred shortly after his ominous “bigg” tweet when he asked Michael Arrington why he was selling Techcrunch. Arrington is not selling Techcrunch (that we know of) but that didn’t stop Rose from dropping the bomb on his 1 million+ Twitter followers.

We will know whether the New Digg is rolling out today or not by the end of the day. Other speculation at this point is premature.

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Read more about Digg on this Social Media Blog.

If you haven’t heard of Tumblr, you will. The pace that it’s currently growing is similar to (if not greater than) the type of growth that Twitter experienced 2 years ago. The blog/microblog/community hybrid social media site is well on its way to hitting the mainstream soon.

While its users and fans are often rabid, there is one entity that doesn’t give it much respect: Google. Search engines in general are frowning on ranking Tumblelogs well in their results pages because of Tumblr’s greatest strength: ease of content aggregation.

Simplicity, Thy Name is Tumblr

Anyone who has a Tumblr page can create 2 things extremely quickly: content and backlinks. One simply has to go through other Tumblr pages that the millions of users have created and click the “Reblog” button. They can add their own content to it in the form of notes, add tags, even adjust the URL. They also get a backlink from the source because whenever something is reblogged, a note with a link goes up at the source.

Assuming that most bypass the notes and tags, it is possible to place content on your Tumblelog and a backlink in approximately 4 seconds.

To put it into perspective, one of our clients currently runs 15 successful and content-rich Tumblelogs and spends less than 30 minutes a day keeping them maintained.

This simplicity is one of Tumblr’s greatest strengths, if not THE greatest, but…

… Google Doesn’t Like It

Anyone who optimizes sites for Google knows there are 2 things that hold the most value for rankings: content and backlinks.

Tumblelogs are set on subdomains of tumblr.com or on their own domains hosted by Tumblr. For most platforms, this is extremely useful in SEO as the search engines consider subdomains as their own unique website in many occasions. Blogger, a site that is owned by Google, has literally millions of subdomains that act as stand-alone websites where people can create theirblogname.blogspot.com and have that site rank well for their keywords.

Tumblr does not have that luxury. Somewhere along the lines, Google and the other search engines realized that it would be not only possible but encouraged by Tumblr and other people duplicate content and generate backlinks. As a result, it takes a lot more effort to get the search engines’ attention for stronger rankings.

Another factor that hurts Tumblr on the search engine is the lack of unique title tags for many of the pages. Those created as “Text” get the title of the story as the title tag, but pictures and videos share the same title tag as the homepage of their Tumblelog.

We are currently testing to see if this lack of respect from the search engines applies to outbound links. If the links are tainted in some way, Tumblr’s usefulness in optimizing other sites is also reduced compared to other platforms. We will see, as we have several test Tumblelogs running. When we know for sure, we’ll post the results here.

Does It Matter?

If you’re getting into Tumblr for SEO purposes to either achieve rankings directly or to use Tumblr as a linking tool, there are other similar free blogging and microblogging platforms that are superior.

If you’re getting into Tumblr because you want to share and find content, then Tumblr is ideal. The community aspect combined with the ease of use and maintenance make Tumblr a prime site through which to have fun, share, and network.

Does Tumblr matter? It all depends on how you want to use it.

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Read more about Tumblr on this Social Media Blog.

The Automotive Industry has begun realizing more and more the importance to become a part of the Social Media Industry to ensure continued success and to collide with the times. You are able to see this with Toyota, Ford and others that have initialized a relationship with Social Media. But how do YOU do it?

Whether you are a big Dealership or a small one, Social Media needs to become integrated within your Marketing Strategy. With any promotion for your Dealership, you plan, assign a person, or team and you execute. It is much the same with Social Media. It is important that you first start with a plan.

The Plan

Think of how you want to be perceived on your Social Networks. Unlike other media forms – a sales pitch or Inventory is not going to cut it. – So you need to think of how to grab people’s attention without sounding as if you are trying to sell something.

Sounds like a waste of time, right?

Currently Facebook has reached 500 million active users. Twitter has over 600 thousand searches a day and the average person watches 15 minutes of YouTube every single day. These statistics astound many and are vital towards your campaign. Knowing the effect Social Media has on people you need to create a strategic plan that uses your Dealerships name as a fun, informative, helpful and yes, useful way. The easiest way to manage and maintain your Social Networks is to assign a person or a team to continuously update your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube Accounts.

Whom Do I Assign for Social Media?

This answer is a lot easier than you think. Look around your Dealership; the same people you trust to sell, answer the phones, and run the Dealership are the same people you should entrust your Social Networks to, Trust your employees online as you currently do offline. Once you assemble an SM team, think of creative content that would be useful for your online community as well as, grabbing their attention to your efforts. The more outside the box you go, the more responses you will receive.

The Content

Have fun with the content you choose to post for your online community, think of quizzes, multiple choices, and interactive videos that will grab the attention of your viewers. Make sure to incorporate articles that are informative about the Automotive Industry by writing or simply searching for them online. Use the knowledge that you know with how-to videos or articles that will be helpful to your community and showcase your Dealership, as well as, those working in your Dealership.

Show personality! No one enjoys mundane reads or videos, so think up creative original content and that way you will not only receive great feedback but also increase your SMO and SEO amongst search engines.

The Interactions

When you start taking your Social Media seriously, people will notice. They will see your hard work and efforts and want to be a part of it. They will do so, by sharing your content and by interacting with your various Social Networks. This is a good sign, and exactly what you want to strive for since it will create a domino effect of their friends and followers seeing just how great of a Dealership you are.

You must remember with every interaction made by a member of your online community, you need to pay attention and respond, use their name and handle to keep the personable relationship flowing. Remember, not responding is like sending a letter and not getting one back. It just sucks! So, respond!

These few and easy steps will guide you on the right road to creating the proper Social Media success you are trying to ensue with your Dealership. It will take effort and time to continue the journey and see results. However, the more time spent within Social Media, the more you optimize your name, your vehicles and own your online reputation unlike ever before.

Nothing you do in Social Media is a waste of time. Everything you do, gains you possibility and recognition.

Are you currently happy with your Social Media plan?

Erin Ryan
Social Media Specialist
TK Carsites

http://facebook.com/tkcarsites

“Clicking on the link increases my ‘influence’ and gives you the chance to have more of your own.”

At least that’s their premise.

When I first heard about Fast Company’s Influence Project nearly a month ago, I scoffed. Actually, I nearly choked. The concept of judging one’s online influence by seeing how many people they can get to click on their personalized link was never going to work.

It worked. Over 22,000 people have created profiles. At least 2 out of 3 of those people have generate clicks since upon clicking once I was in the 33rd percentile. Assuming that many up at the top of the list have generated hundreds, even thousands of clicks, let’s put the average at 50 clicks per profile.

That’s over a million visitors.

Laugh all you want. Blog about how silly the idea is. Tell your friends that popularity does not equal influence. Predict that 4chan will win in the end. It doesn’t matter.

People created accounts. More people clicked.

Heck, I created an account for “research” just now. A month late? I’m not worried. Even if I started on time, I could never put in the time to win the “prize” (which I’m still unclear about).

They will end up with millions of page views (not including the blogs and sites ripping on them, then linking to the project) and then get ripped on by marketing companies for doing it wrong.

Right or wrong, Fast Company won.

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Read more about social media campaigns on this Social Media Blog.

For five years, YouTube has completely transformed the way we spend time on the Internet. It took a concept that today seems common but it truly revolutionized how we engage online.

At YouTube, you’re the star. Or the director. Or the producer. Or the graphics generate.

Or everything at once. It’s all about you. What you see, what you do, and what you envision – YouTube became the venue to express… whatever.

The Infographic below from our friends at Flowtown truly puts it all in perspective.

Click to Enlarge.

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Via Flowtown. Read more about YouTube on this Social Media Blog.