Hope your Friday is going well. The dog is doing well... his name is Sawyer ... and he is pretty smart. The drive to get him last Sunday was adventurous. Some of the trip was on a one lane gravel road along the ridge of a mountain, with big, steep, valleys on both sides. The trip was definitely worth it as he is a very welcome addition to our house. He is probably 95% or so potty trained now which is a huge plus. I'll work on getting some pictures and maybe even a video up by next Friday.

I beta tested "Dofus" a game that I think comes originally from Spain. Maybe I've been spoiled, or maybe it gets much better after the first few levels but it is really, really boring to me. You can still check it out though if you're so inclined by going here.

http://www.dofus.com/

I also think we're all in the process of getting the flu here, so please keep us in your thoughts and prayers and have a wonderful weekend.

Hey we finally got a little snow - four inches or so.

Sociagami - you can monitor your Myspace and Facebook in one place.

http://www.sociagami.com/

Content is still king - even for social media.
http://searchengineland.com/080226-122341.php

A good visual representation of social sites
http://searchengineland.com/080226-074010.php

Blogging for SEO
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628519

Thats all for today - enjoy it!!

Some analysis on the pending (or not) merger of Yahoo / Microsoft - is Google the real winner?

http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-32167620080226

Optimizing your paid search ads.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/paid-search/wilson-keyword-matching.htm

Minimum bids are changing in Yahoo paid.

http://searchengineland.com/080226-190001.php

Highlighting terms for SEO

http://searchengineland.com/070222-133032.php

A great way to discover keywords using social marketing

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080216-114837

Enjoy your day!!

The trip to get the new dog (Sawyer) was interesting to say the least... I'll talk more about it on Friday.

A good place to find out head lines that work is Traffic Jam.

Some discussion on three search engines.

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628482

A nice article to check out.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-brash-seos-antifesto

I don't think we've mentioned yet that we are looking for a new puppy - so please wish us luck and success in our search. We have a possible lead and will be checking on that today.

We had a wonderful miniature Schnauzer for 17 years and he was a whole lot of fun and such a blessing to us. If we can find one that turns out half as well as him we'll be doing good.

You can see a picture of him here.

You Tube New features -

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080214-184339

A huge list of the social sites.

http://3spots.blogspot.com/2006/01/all-social-that-can-bookmark.html

Building a radio show.

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/building-a-radio-show-audience-one-keyword-at-a-time

Enjoy your Thursday.

Why Customer Reviews Boost Sales
http://www.wilsonweb.com/conversion/wilson-product-reviews.htm

Page Rank Simplified
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3628444

Enjoy your Day!

Good Morning !!

Optimizing your landing pages -

Click Here

Enjoy your day.

Good Monday Morning,

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - I did.

Chicken Soup for the SEO soul -

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628416

If you use Google Ads they're going to be cracking down on the "Display URL"

http://searchengineland.com/080213-084231.php

Using Keywords to find your niches.

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/identify-and-exploit-niche-markets

What happens if you get blacklisted by Google

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2008/02/google_blacklists_gocompare.html

Enjoy your day.

The lucky 700th post - and I do mean lucky. Some of you know - but for those of you that don't we live in the boonies. I have no real complaints with living in the middle of no where - since I don't have to drive to work (and really I can work anywhere) it is no big deal. In fact there are some benefits to it. The only draw back (until now) was that the only internet access we could get was dial up... and pretty crappy dial up at that (we're talking 33k here on a good day). Yesterday we got cable internet access. To say that I'm pleased would be like saying that ice cream is yummy. I don't think I've really grasped the full effect yet, but I will be having a whole lot more fun on World of Warcraft and I know that my work will go much faster (because that has already happened) and I need to make this post short :o) - UPS just dropped off my router. I know, I know I'm like a little boy at Christmas.

Happy Thursday -

How to shout on social sites (without shouting)

http://searchengineland.com/080212-080047.php

Social Media Fatigue (a really nice graph / picture)

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/visualizing_social_media_fatigue.php

Enjoy your day.

65 degrees yesterday and snowed about half an inch this morning. Not much in the inbox today but here is a good place to bookmark and catch the latest news on the Microsoft / Yahoo stuff.

http://searchengineland.com/lands/microsoft-yahoo-merger.php

Happy Tuesday!!

Couple of articles on the Microhoo possible merger.

After the rejection from Yahoo Microsoft isn't backing down.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/11/technology/yahoo_microsoft/index.htm

Does Yahoo have what it takes to stop a hostile take over.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a8Uktx266dwQ&refer=us

Involving SEO in the design process.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/seo/dunn-seo-webdesign.htm

Hope you had a wonderful weekend - it has been pretty windy here... I guess winter isn't over yet.

Google bashes the Microsoft bid -

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628370

One other thing over the weekend Yahoo rejected the Microsoft bid - guess they want some more cash. And they want to talk to AOL about merging.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080211/wr_nm/yahoo_aol_dc

A good post from the LED Digest is below -

Five Link Bait Methods -

http://searchengineland.com/080205-084849.php

Could people be tiring of the social networks -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/31/myspace_fb_comscore_drop/

Reputation Management

http://searchengineland.com/080130-084420.php

Five Questions - Getting started with a blog

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628251


Here's the Post ---------

From: Steve Pronger
[email]: http://flow-to.com/email/LED.1202258253l3phwf2su.mth
Subject: Social media

> Personally, I was tired of [social media] > long ago. I still use some social sites for > marketing purposes.
- Nathan Holley, LED 2583
- http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1998/190/

How do you "use" them Nathan? Do you jump in and say "Hey guys, I'm a marketer, and I'm here to sell you something". If you do, you'll be about as welcome as the telemarketer who rings you in the middle of dinner. Or do you say "Hey guys, thanks for letting me join YOUR community. I'm here to contribute and learn. If you follow my participation in this community - content submission (not just mine), comments, messages, voting etc you'll start to see me as an expert in a particular field. Your go-to guy. And having accepted me as a trusted advisor in this particular field you'll look a bit deeper into my profile and discover that I just happen to sell a product or provide a service which can help you."

I'm no expert on social media. I'm still a rookie and I've made PLENTY of mistakes, as do most "marketers". Even the big name Web marketing "gurus" are getting this wrong. And that's because we approach this as marketers and SEOs. The social communities see us coming a mile off.
But, get it right and the benefits are real. I'm starting to see tangible results. Links, rankings, traffic. It works.

> Will social media sort of die out, at least > a bit, after the hype wears off?

Nope, not a chance. Hype? Rupert Murdoch didn't fork out $580 Million to buy MySpace because of hype. Social media and Web 2.0 is a fundamental change in the way your potential customers spend their time online.
According to the Online Publishers Association (Feb 2007) they spend only 5% of their time using search engines. Download a copy of Rich Schefren's Attention Age Doctrine Vol 2. Makes for interesting reading.

Steve Pronger
http://www.stevepronger.com

Comment: mailto:post@led-digest.com?Subject=Social-media




Steve, thanks for your comments. I sense you don't have much experience using social sites - not meant as derogatory at all - you stated yourself that you're not an expert in the space. I've been using sites like Digg since early 2006, not as long as some but long enough to build up very powerful profiles. And I use them every day.

When I stated that I use social sites for marketing, I meant exactly what I said. I use social media sites for marketing. I don't use them for fun, or to find news, or to make friends. I use them for marketing.
But how, you ask? Good question. I won't tell you, you'll have to figure it out, but here's a summary:

1. Approach social media like you approach a party: attend to join the conversation and add value. Don't look like a drunk loser and don't post your own stuff (until you earn the right).

2. Build your profiles through consistent use of the sites: submitting content, commenting, voting, and sending private messages.

3. Keep a low profile about what you do for a living. I'm an affiliate marketer, I do it for myself professionally, I don't have a firm or even a site that anyone knows about. You can bet I don't advertise my site's on my profile pages - instead I advertise my other profiles. That's key.

4. Learn the ropes. Each site has its own flavour and style. After a time, you'll learn what types of content works where and why.

5. Build content for the sites. See #4 and then create custom content that's just for the sites you're targeting.

6. Keep it non-commercial. The content you promote needs to be valuable and unique, and non-commercial. Blogs are a popular format, but Digg especially dislikes marketing blogs, anything to do with SEO, or lots of ad supported sites. Stay as .org as you can in terms of presentation.

7. Track progress. Develop a set of metrics you can apply to social media, and track your marketing progress. If you don't, it's all just a big guess.

There, I don't use social sites for fun, because they're all a giant waste of time (except Delicious). And I don't use social sites to make friends. I use them to market - I play the game according to the rules and I benefit from the traffic and backlinks. Don't ask me to give you a digg or a stumble, I won't, and you won't ever know my profile IDs. But you'll see me on the frontpage of Digg all the time - heck I was just there on Monday!!

-Nathan Holley

Comment: mailto:post@led-digest.com?Subject=Social-media

Apologies for the no post yesterday - it was pretty wild here Weds night / early Thurs morning. Lots of wind and trees blown down around our area - but we are all safe and no damage here... It did continue to storm during the morning on Thurs so we stayed off the computer for the am. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those folks that had damage / injuries / and loss of life.

We'll be doing our social update tomorrow - we'll take care of cleaning out the inbox of other stuff today.

Finding ideal price points - Click Here

Rating how the Super Bowl ads did from a SEM stand point.
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3628357

Enjoy your day and hug your family!!

It will be 70 degrees here today... all I can say is wow. We're also supposed to have some big storms tonight and hopefully they won't be too bad.

Balancing looks with your SEO

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628289

An update on the Yahoo / Google / Microsoft battle

http://searchengineland.com/080204-172011.php

Using testimonials to increase your conversions.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/conversion/wilson-testimonials.htm

Enjoy your day.

I hope you enjoyed your weekend.

Here's 5 reasons why rankings may be a poor judge of where you're at in your optimization program.

http://searchengineland.com/080131-071244.php

Hope you are enjoying your Friday. I'm a big snow lover so I'm jealous of you folks north of us.. there is snow all around us except for south and we get nothing.

Today a little off beat with the fun. I've started to try to get in a little better shape (as well as Lisa and Haley). So I got them a "Total Gym" - they have been loving it so far, I haven't really tried it yet as I'm easing into some tread mill walking first. One thing there were a couple of things wrong with it when we got it but the company sent us some replacement parts pretty quick.

Lost is finally back on - I did get the Lost 3rd season DVD but the 'extras' to me anyway weren't that great. It was great to review things... I had planned on watching Season 1 and 2 but time got away from me.

We are also in the process of shopping for a puppy so wish us well that we'll get one half as good as Schotzi.

Enjoy your weekend.