This question has been floating out there for a while, but I just wanted to get it in circulation again. Frankly, I believe that if you are not willing to reveal who you really are when participating in social networks, forums, and other social media, then you shouldn’t have a voice.

Trusting Anonymous Sources
In the real world, we are responsible for our actions. We’re liable for what we say and do. Why should it be any different online?

Why should we be able to go around representing ourselves as someone else, or hiding behind artificial usernames or anonymity? People who do this in the real world are usually doing so for a few reasons:

1 - They’re hiding from someone
2 - They are criminals
3 - They are spammers

A-List blogger, Jeremy Schoemaker recently published an article posing essentially the same question, Is Anonymity Good For The Internets? In looking through the comments, I noted something interesting . . . most of those who were fervently in favor of anonymity were posting using keywords as their name instead of posting as themselves.

What does that tell you?

99% of the time when someone creates an anonymous or fake account on our BiggerPockets.com Real Estate Community, these people are there to do one of the above. Most are spammers, but there are several who are there to misrepresent the truth (lie), and many who are there to scam others. We also will not allow anonymous commenters, and I’ve now implemented the same policy on this blog as well. If you can’t represent yourself, you’re not wanted.

What do you think? Should people be allowed to remain anonymous online?

When you post links, tips, and other information on Twitter, you get little direct benefit, unless your linking to your own content only, which is a turnoff for many followers. While your followers may appreciate the information you share, and you may build your Twitter follower count, you’re foregoing the opportunity to build your own direct community for immediate gratification.

Instead of Tweeting About Your Niche, Blog About It!

One of the perks of Twitter, of course, is that it lets you send short bits of information. We may not always want to do an entire blog post about something, but I’ve noticed in my case and that of others, that we are spending more and more time chatting it up on Twitter at the expense of our own blogs.

I realized that I was spending close to an half hour a day on Twitter . . . time that I could otherwise spend building up my own content and blog’s brand. Some people may argue that I can better build the brand by spending time on Twitter, but I disagree. I think Twitter is a great tool to help extend the reach of your brand, but in that half hour a day I was Tweeting, I could be working on my own articles and creating better content for my readers.

Reasons to Blog Instead of Tweeting

• First and foremost, you retain the traffic - Content is king, and once you go on Twitter and other networks to share content instead of doing it on your own site, you’re helping to build their community instead of your own. Of course, your followers may enjoy the link out to a cool story or link, but why give away the link juice when you can do a post about it on your own site and retain eyeballs?
• Monetization - There are certainly some tools designed to monetize Twitter for users (primarily, these are money making URL shortner tools), but if you’re adding the content to your own site, you increase the monetization capabilities of your blog.
• Deep exploration of a topic, site, link, etc - I realize that the beauty of Twitter is that it is a “micro blogging” application. That said, it isn’t a great place to deeply explore and delve into a topic. You can certainly talk about a topic in a series of tweets, but it makes it difficult for a large group of readers/followers to stay on message. Obviously, a blog post can deeply examine any subject, of course provided the writer is capable of expressing himself.

I do think that there is value in participating on Twitter, and I’ve made a ton of great connections through it, but I think it is very easy to get caught up in it all. A little bit of time each day is fine, but any more and you should probably be hanging out on your own website or building up your own content.

Are there other reasons that I’m missing? What do YOU think?

Is your time better served posting on Twitter or adding additional content to your own website?

By now, you need to live in North Korea to not have heard of Twitter. I’ll admit, at first I didn’t really get it, but after a while, I’ve managed to figure out how to use the site to engage others and make new connections. (The Wall Street Journal actually had an article about the high rate of Twitter Quitters yesterday). After a while playing around, I’ve seen how proper use of the site can result in a steady flow of new traffic to my website(s). I’ve also seen a few thing that people do regularly that really turn me off. I’m sure that I’m not alone in these points, and thought it worth a quick discussion.

Want to Lose Twitter Followers? Here’s How:

1. When someone new follows you, make sure you send an auto-DM to them that points them to some affiliate program you’re a part of
2. Publically send your followers advertisements, affiliate links, or other SPAMMY garbage
3. Use your Twitter account to post the same advertisement over and over again in every post you make
4. Get into flame wars with others as often as possible
5. Constantly yell at everyone by POSTING IN ALL CAPS
6. Thank every user that follows you. There is no need to do it. STOP!
7. Only posting tweets when you’ve got a new blog post. If you’ve got nothing to say, why bother with an account? Just give people your feed reader. The only reason people will follow you is because you follow them back . . . which brings me to
8. Follow 2,000 people after opening your account. We haven’t figured that tactic out yet (eyes rolling)

Got more of your own? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Don’t forget to jump on Twitter and follow me at http://www.twitter.com/jrdorkin.

Fast forward two hours
Another post showed up on the same thread, this time by another new member. This post, answered the non sequitur of the first new poster, but in doing so, pointed him to this awesome website that demonstrated what he was talking about.

Spammers will Never Learn!
Promoting yourself through forums is a great way to get traffic to your website, but pulling this crap isn’t the way to go. Its just amateur hour! Of course, upon doing a quick IP lookup, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber had the same one . . . SHOCKER! The posts were removed, along with my two new friends (who, I’m assuming you now understand was the same idiot person).

How to Use Forums to Market Your Website

Forum marketing is one of the most simple, effective and FREE ways to market, period. Here’s how you do it:

1. Join a forum that is related to the niche of your website, and after doing so, be sure to read their site rules. Every site has a different set of rules or guidelines to work within . . . break the rules like the idiot I mentioned before and you’ll likely be booted. That said, 75% of the forums out there (I pulled that number out of a hat, but from what I can tell, it works!) don’t do any kind of moderating, so the entire thing is going to be a haven for spammers - posting here is a waste of your time . . . move on!
2. Create a forum signature. Again, be sure your signature complies with the rules of that forum. Make sure to include your website in your signature. I’d also recommend using your real name. People are more likely to have some kind of interest in you and your links if you’re willing to put yourself on the line by telling people who you are.
3. Get active by posting RELEVANT content on the forum and by participating in different conversations. Don’t just post a bunch of fluff. Engage in conversation and get involved. As you spend time on the forum, people will get to know you (make sure you’ve got a personal avatar uploaded), and eventually, they’ll likely want to visit the link in your signature.
4. It is that simple! You don’t need to post nonsense posts that link back to your site or manipulate the forums by posting a one-two combination like the aforementioned bozo. Just get involved and you’ll soon see actual gains in traffic from your engagement.

Good luck!

Don’t Take Their Word for It

The day came and went, and from what I heard, it was a great gathering. Since I was unable to attend, of course, I wanted some proof that our company name did indeed make it on all the materials. I saw some pics and we were certainly present.

So, Why am I Disappointed?
Part of the verbal agreement that I entered into with the person who ran the event was that I would get some t-shirts — after all, it was the least they could do in return for the $250 we spent, right?

I was told on several occasions that the package was en-route. When it never arrived I was given excuse after excuse after excuse; this went on for 2 months. I was then told on January 4 that I’d get a shirt from a later event that took place 3 weeks ago, but low and behold that never happened either.

Why Should Anyone Care About a Stupid T-Shirt

This was about principal, not a $10 shirt. I entered into a business agreement with another, well known businessman in my industry, and he’s just blown me off. The shirt was something I had been promised in return for my money, and the right thing to do would have been to send it to me, as promised. This was someone who I respected and hoped to foster a deeper business relationship with, but how could I trust someone on large transactions when they never fully came through on this small one?

Lessons Learned?
I’d say that I learned one important lesson: Get to know better the people with whom you are doing business. The entire thing reminded me to look at how I run my own business and make sure I’m doing so ethically. I will never allow myself to take anyone for even a few dollars, because it all comes down to the fact that, your principals are how others will judge you and your company.

Who knows . . . maybe some day I’ll see my shirts. Don’t worry, I won’t be holding my breath.

I recently discovered the following site that should be a great help: Hexadecimal Triple Color Codes. This easy to use site allows you to find any 3 digit hex color code by grabbing the x axis information (rg) and following it with the y axis (b).

I know, it sounds like a simple question, but someone who doesn’t know what an SEO professional does is likely to get screwed by some con man looking to rip him off. Most people will do a few minutes of research and find out that people who help others with SEO exist to help others climb in the search results of the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, etc.

Last year, I wrote an article about how to work with SEO consulting companies, but after the events of today, I wanted to riff a bit more.

Last night I was contacted by the representative of an SEO company who was looking to help another company with their site’s optimization. He wanted to advertise on one of my sites and I quoted him the price. In response, he told me that the budget was tight and offered me a price that was 11% of our rate. I told him that I couldn’t do it, and got the following response:

If you really don’t want to accept $200 for the couple of minutes of work it takes to put up a[n advertisement], then that’s your decision.

Well no, I don’t want to take $200 for an ad position that is worth $1800. Does he expect to buy an $100,000 Porsche for $11k? It was simply a ridiculous request, and as someone who works consulting people on website optimization, he knows full well the value of advertising; it is not about the time it takes to place the ad, but about the value of the ad itself. The NY times could place a full-page ad on page 2 that I design, which would take 5 minutes of their time, but that position would probably be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. People simply AMAZE me!

What to Look for in an SEO Company?

Start by looking at their website. This is usually the fastest way to write off an SEO company. After getting an email from the guy, I decided to swing by his website to check it out. He was smart enough to never mention the URL of the company that he was trying to advertise, because I would have shared the following with them.

His website consisted of 3 pages: Home, Services, and Contact Us
The “Contact us” page didn’t work. The other pages were missing meta tags for keywords and description. By spending less than a minute on the website, I would have told anyone interested in hiring them for SEO to RUN! If the company you’re looking to hire isn’t fully search engine optimized themseves, why would they know how to help you any better? There is of course, more to SEO than simply adding META tags, however, on almost every occasion, when I find that there is some SEO that is doing a poor job, it turns out that they skip their own tags. It is a good screen to use to cut out the crap.

How do you Check Someone’s META Tags?

This is very simple, even if you know NOTHING about making websites or HTML. Just go to the menu bar of your browser and enter the VIEW dropdown — you’ll find either “Source” or “View Source”. When the source page opens up, you’re going to want to look for the HEAD tag, which is simply the word Head surrounded by brackets. Somewhere after the head tag and before the BODY tag, you’re looking for tags that start with META NAME.

Here’s an example of what the Meta Tags look like:

<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”SEO, META TAGS, search engine optimization”>
<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”This is a description of the page using keywords”>

If you don’t see anything resembling the code above on their pages, then you know it is time to run.

Summary:
Had the customer of the company that contacted me, done the above before hiring the firm, they would have seen that they were not cut out to consult on SEO. If you don’t practice what you’re slated to preach, then you shouldn’t be charging folks for your services. Additionally, you don’t want to insult potential partners by offering them 11% of their going rate, because that might lead to a blog post about your nonsense . . . luckily for them I’m a nice guy and never mentioned them by name.