Daily Bits

Internet

The Ultimate Guide To Blog Promotion

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In the time it takes you to read this sentence, 3 new blogs will have come into existence. There can be no doubt that the world wide web in general, and social media sites in particular, are becoming more crowded and more competitive every second.  The result?  Standing out from the crowd is getting harder and harder.

Social media marketing is both necessary and extremely challenging. Blogs are an integral part of SEM, but simply building one isn’t enough. You need to get people to read what you write!

That being said, there are myriad resources that have become available which can help you promote and measure the success of your blog. Below you will find a definitive guide to some of the best resources online.

Overview of Blog Promotion

Promoting Your Blog

Some sweet, simple and easily actionable tips for blog promotion from Google itself, although we also love their disclaimer: “This is in no way a science or guarantee; it’s simply a few suggestions with which many bloggers have found success”. If you know little to nothing about blog promotion, it’s a good place to get an idea of the basics without getting overwhelmed.

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

SEOmoz offers some great, detailed advice for bloggers who want not just more traffic but better, more targeted traffic. There’s a lot here to help diagnose why your blog might be fledgling, and what to do to remedy the situation. [Read more…] about The Ultimate Guide To Blog Promotion

Where Do You Update Your Facebook Status?

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facebook addict
At work? In the living room while watching TV? In bed?

I don’t know about you, but I am online pretty much throughout my waking hours. I have a convenient excuse reason, too: I work online! I am not addicted to the Internet. Neither am I addicted to Facebook. It just so happens that I need these tools for work. Just because I update my status all the time does not mean anything. I’m not like those people who update their Facebook status from – you guessed it – the loo!

Where is this coming from? I just read a press release from AIS Media, a digital agency that recently conducted a survey on where people usually update their status on Facebook; that is, where they are physically located when the access their Facebook accounts.

I don’t know what they were thinking, but they did ask a very personal question in the survey: “Do you ever use Facebook on your mobile device while you’re in the bathroom?”

I suppose the survey was anonymous as, according to AIS, 27 percent of their respondents answered yes. Of those who answered yes, 54.4 percent were women while 45.6 percent were men. More so, those who do use their mobile devices in the bathroom to update their Facebook status mostly fell in the 30 to 49 age category.

AIS, being focused on social media marketing, had some pretty important-sounding conclusions:

While it may seem humorous to survey people about their Facebook usage while in the bathroom, the results underscore the proliferation of consumer social media usage and their strong need to stay connected. For businesses and brands, social media offers an opportunity to engage potential customers like never before.

They’re probably right, but I think it means one thing: we need to get a life. (Ooops, did I just say we?)

Color Me – Julian

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Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame has graced the front pages of newspapers (the traditional kind), news web sites, blogs, and practically every other kind of web site you can find. Whether you admire him or you detest him, you cannot deny that he does attract attention. How can he not?

Here’s another web site that places Julian Assange in focus – in a different way. The Julian Assange Coloring Book may not be on your list of gifts for your children, but it might give you something to do if you do not feel like working. More so, if you are particularly interested in expressing your creative side, you will find the site a nice distraction.

The concept is the same as that of any other coloring book’s concept: you get pages with sketches that need to be filled with colored. The difference is that you get eight pages – all of them virtual – of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks-related images. You also have a color palette from which you can pick colors. As long as you have a computer, you will be able to color your heart out. Now all you need is a teeny weeny spark of artistic sense in you.

Here’s a sample image that needs some work.
Assange Plain

This one is a work in progress.
Assange Colored

As you can probably see, I did not spend much time with coloring books when I was a kid. This web site is not bound to change anything for me.

Amazon Patents “Return-to-Sender” System

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bad presentChristmas is the time to give, but some people have a knack for giving inappropriate gifts. Inappropriate may be a relative label, but we know just how many people return unwanted Christmas gifts. We also know that this period after Christmas is the busiest time of the year for retailers when it comes to returning/exchanging items that are unwanted.

Now, personally, I don’t believe in returning gifts. I am a firm believer in the thought being more important than the actual gift, but apparently, not everyone thinks the same way; and due to this, shops such as Amazon have to deal with tons of requests after Christmas. In order to avoid this, the online superstore has reportedly come up with a system – patented, of course – that will avoid people having to return gifts (and Amazon having to deal with the issues).

The idea is simple: users can label people who have a knack for sending “bad” gifts. If these people send the user gifts, Amazon takes care of the “problem” even before it crops up. It does so by NOT sending the gift at all. More so, users will have options to customize the parameters as to what is a “bad” gift. For example, keywords such as “Hello Kitty” can be used – anything with this tag will not be sent to the user.

Now how do you deal with the sender who might get offended? It seems that Amazon has thought about this as well – users still know that they have “received” a gift and can thank the sender, without the latter knowing that the gift has not been delivered. (With everyone knowing about the system, though, wouldn’t paranoia just make things worse?)

I say it’s a nifty idea, technically, but poses a whole lot of potential complications (relationship-wise) that it simply isn’t worth it. If this thing pushes through, however, the face of online shopping might just change.

Photo via wfnx

A Guide to the Open Internet: What You Need to Know About Net Neutrality

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You’ve probably been reading/hearing about net neutrality in the recent months. Left and right, people are talking about it – either trying to push for the concept or trying to take it down. What is net neutrality anyway, and why should you bother about it?

Simply put, net neutrality is a concept which places ALL web sites and services on the same level; that is, they ought to be treated as being the same by Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone/cable/phone companies. You may think that this sounds logical, but telecommunications companies are leaning towards the other end of the spectrum. They think that web sites and services ought to be grouped into different categories so that they can apply various charging schemes. You getting my drift?

To make the whole concept easier to understand, some guys have created an excellent web site which explains the “open Internet” and what ISPs want to happen: The Open Internet.

Here’s a screen shot of what a free and open Internet brings.
open internet

Get the word out – share the web site and help keep the Internet free and open for all of us!

The Web TV Battle

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Recently the battle between Apple, Google and other companies such as Roku has been heating up, with other big hitters like Amazon also looking to take on established Web TV providers such as Hulu and Google’s YouTube. This battle will be heating up even more in 2011 with Microsoft looking to re-enter the fray with a subscription service for their Xbox 360 game console with an estimated Xbox Live user base of over 20 million.

Below is an Infographic from the guys at Infographiclabs looking at how this current battle is panning out.

Enjoy this great Infographic from our friends at Infographiclabs