Chris Winfield of 10e20.com published a blog post today about Twitter. It’s a great example that if you talk about those who talk, you are going to be talked about.

Most marketing is common sense. Big up ten people and you will find ten people bigging you up in return.

Does this represent a new label for movers and shakers? Is this the start of numerous posts on how to attract the Twitterati?

When Chris published his post Twitter Wrote This Column For Me my Twitter feed lit up with people linking to it. Why? Because he was talking about them. Now, that’s not the only thing going for the post, it’s an interesting post in its own right and anything Chris writes I am going to read and people are going to talk about. Read More →

Categories: Social Networking

I finally found a use for Twitter which combines my love for knocking headline ideas around.

Basically, I get a headline idea which I think worthy of the Twitter mosh pit and I throw it in. If I get feedback great, if not, the headline needs serious work. Even is the response is, “Dude, you’re a real weirdo coming up with that”, it’s all good because for a headline to invoke response is great, even revulsion is fine as long as curiosity is piqued.

We are not here to write a great novel or give Tolstoy a run for his money. We are here to attract peoples attention and somehow get them to do stuff. In my case with the old linkbait, it’s getting them to give up a link, someone poked fun recently as one of my pieces did not make the front page of digg. Well, it got a good, solid pr6 link from an aged authority blog and that’s what this is all about. It may not be pretty, it wont win a Pulitzer but as long as it gets the link, who cares.

But Twitter is very useful as I get instant feedback and as I have nearly 700 followers, nearly all in the online marketing space it is very useful.

I am creating a ton of example headlines to give away in my linkbait coaching program, I have seen a real need for clients to get up to speed with the technique and get a jump start with killer headlines. People can now hire their very own, human headline generating system for the daily price of a mocha.

Every so often I will throw one into the Twitter mosh pit and see what comes back.

If you have any suggestions on headlines to explore, let me know in the comments.

Categories: headlines

When you have every social media marketing blog loaded in your RSS reader, you soon come to identify a problem within the space. The problem is the term Linkbait, it is overused, misused and stretched to cover almost all content ever published on the web.

Different definitions of linkbait I have heard:

• A top ten list
• Anything that is submitted to digg
• Anything I create
• Any strong opinion
• Anything Shoemoneysays
• Anything Jason Calacanis says
• Anything Michael Gray says

Read More →

Categories: Twitter · digg

“Keep silent unless what you are going to say is more important than silence”

It’s a self portrait of Rosa Salvator from the 17th century. Its unusual for it’s age as the quote is actually in the painting. This is one of my favourite paintings in the National.

If the quote is familiar it is because it has been paraphrased by Lisa Simpson and Abraham Lincoln.

Categories: Social media marketing

Check this out, this digg front pager greeted me at 5am on a Saturday morning. I noticed out of the 20 other front pagers there were 7 stories similar.

As you can see, none of my friends dugg. But what is interesting is I cannot see any of the usual suspects. Friends of ours. Kinda sounds like a secret crime syndicate and in a way it is.

The point being, this story hit the front page with no massaging from professional diggers and their voting gangs. Although I do not completely discount the fact that all these accounts are manufactured I think it highly unlikely.

It suggests that a story submitted by an unknown digger, voted for by unconnected, natural diggers, will hit the front page at 30 - 40 diggs.

So what do we do, start a new account incognito and only submit solid “geek” stuff? That’s up to you. But may I suggest this one point if you are creating the stuff yourself. Make it the kind of content to appeal to the “geek” and submit it on the weekend. All the professional diggers are sleeping off their repetitive strain injuries and so the 10 Ways to sell Payday Loans to the Homeless will not be in play.

As social marketers we are communicators, digg is simply the path of least resistance to communicate our message. Yes, our message may be one of persuasion, but it all comes down to communication. We must speak to those who have influence, and I gotta say, a lot of accounts that once had influence have had their power drastically reduced.

Instead of having a moan, look at your content, look at places which will inspire the creation of that content. Crafting of content seems to be the factor which is getting the least attention these days.

Stop with the Twittering and get down to creating some arse kicking content!

Categories: Social media marketing

A year ago I thought about writing an ebook about linkbait and social media marketing. It seemed the most effective way to teach what I have learned and to do in a format that is financially rewarding. At the time I had to postpone it as clients got in the way, all wanting me to write kickass linkbait for their website.

After thinking for a long time about the ebook option, I realised it had too many flaws. Here is why I don’t like ebooks:

• Teaching is one way
• Inability of reader to ask questions
• One size fits all
• Tend not to be rewritten and so go stale
• Difficult for the writer to offer individuals specific industry
• Cannot take advantage of breaking opportunities
• Small amount of people actually read them

On that last point, I don’t know about you but I actually want people to read my stuff rather than taking the money and run. I want people to succeed, I get a real buzz from it. It’s why I love what I do.

So ebooks, unless free and addressing specific issues are out for me.

But, ask yourself, “How can I become a better linkbaiter?” I’m not going to offer an ebook, but I am going to offer an amazing service which will help you create your own killer linkbait as good as the pros.

I am going to be blogging this over the next few days as I am about to launch my linkbait coaching service to a few, selected clients.

Watch this space.

Categories: Social media marketing

Shel Israel Should Not Be Anywhere Near A Camera

Loren Feldman is pretty much the only guy who can make me laugh out loud on the interweberscope.

Good round up of the spat here, The Best Advice For Getting Yourself Out A PR Nightmare. I love a good spat, in fact I like to start the day off with a spat. I might have spat and chips for lunch.

Categories: Spat

Or go to a site which actually works.

From the Digg blog,

“Hey everyone, We know that we are currently having some issues on Digg at the moment. Submissions, commenting, digging and other actions may sometimes fail. We have a crack team assigned to it and will be making numerous fixes as soon as possible to get Digg back to 100% for ya. Please bear with us … Eli”

Interesting though, very few “paid to digg” people on the front page. Maybe digg should keep it that way if they want to keep the likes of me out

Categories: digg

Stumbleupon now allows you to change your stumble blog from a list to a grid. It takes a screen cap if the pages you have stumbled and makes a very cool grid. Here is a screen cap of my own blog which you can find here.

A lot of changes to websites such as SU can turn out to be mere frippery. Time will tell, but I think this option is going to be useful.

Categories: Stumbleupon

So I previously made fun of Twitter, but there was something about it which kept my attention. One thing which kept me connected was the fact that my peers were spending time there and a conversation existed. Not knowing what the conversation was about became painful, so I had to keep dipping in.

And, there are bits and bobs and nuggets of gold in there, sure you get the, “I’m on the bus”, type twitter, but what you also get is an insight into “the conversation”. I use it professionally, so all the people I follow have something to do with my business and being able to know what is the “thing of the moment” can be very useful. Read More →

Categories: Twitter