Helping friends and Building Influence with Paper.li

Recently I noticed I was featured in a paper.li daily by @morgaine. I went and checked it out, thought it was a pretty interesting site. Being the web 2.0/Social Media tinkerer that I am I could not help myself so I created an account and started playing around with my own dailies. I found some extremely beneficial aspects to the service but I am going to focus on 2 of them for now:

1. Helping Friends
2. Building Influence

Helping Friends

Since your paper.li papers can be about lists, people or hashtags – there is great opportunity to help people. How is that you ask? Well if I make a Joe Hackman daily, it will feature my tweets and the tweets of my followers to generate the article content, videos, etc for the feature. Being mentioned in a daily, or anything, is almost always good for a Twitter user (unless someone is complaining about you!). The other thing it does is build back-links to your sources articles and blogs. We all want to be found, being linked to will benefit your sources SEO. When you start to think through the list feature, hashtags, etc, you start to understand how there are many ways to help your friends achieve the mentions and back-links for better SEO.

Building Influence

This point is fairly simple, people like to be featured in your paper for the reasons above and for another important reason. It is great to have your content recognized and shared. In this case you will receive recognition for following others. How? By following anyone on Twitter they have a chance to be featured on your paper, if they are feature and they actually are paying attention they are likely to appreciate it. This means that if you produce a paper.li your sources on Twitter are more likely to be recognized and recognize you. That is influence. Of course you could also record a cool video and write about it in your blog then direct people to read about it. I think that might add a bit of influence as well.

Be sure to watch the video for additional tips and subscribe to my Youtube Channel if you enjoyed this post. I’d also love to hear your tips about how to utilize paper.li.

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Tags: Joe Hackman, Paper.li, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Tips, Twitter, Youtube
Posted in SEO, Social Media Strategy, Tools, Twitter, Video | View Comments

Interview Diane Rayfield Harp Social (Podcast)

Tonight I interviewed Diane Rayfield of Harp Social on Blogtalkradio. I invited Diane because I wanted to integrate more social media related guests into my podcast. Diane is the founder and CEO of Harp Social where she leads a team of social media, SEO and online marketing professionals to strategize, manage and evolve integrated online marketing for businesses. I met Diane at Amplify.com a social networking site that I have blogged about frequently. I always enjoy talking social media with people like Diane because I learn from them and the energy is upbeat and inspiring. Diane and I really covered a lot of ground during the interview, but her area of expertise is Strategy, Metrics and Inbound Marketing – “Getting Found”. Here are some highlight areas you can expect to learn more about if you listen to the entire episode:

1. Location Based Marketing (Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla)
2. Monitoring/Metrics (Radian6, Google Alerts, Social Mention and Hootsuite)
3. Amplify.com
4. Facebook Pages
5. Video Marketing (Including Youtube)
6. Social Media Policies
7. LinkedIn (Including Answers, Groups)
8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
9. Turning Point Autism Foundation

You can follow Diane on Twitter @dianerayfield or visit harpsocial.com to learn more about her company.

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Tags: Amplify.com, Diane Rayfield, Facebook, Harp Social, Joe Hackman, Joesgonesocial, LinkedIn, Turning Point Autism Foundation, Twitter
Posted in Amplify, Blogging, Facebook, Interviews, Podcasts, SEO, Social Media Strategy, Tools, Twitter, Wordpress | View Comments

Twitter New Follower Emails Get a Facelift

I noticed the new Twitter follower Emails got a facelift today and they are actually encourage interaction. I’ve often wondered why the current one was so limited note the lack of any useful links for interaction:

The new one actually gives you an easier view of the usernames including their own(some people have multiple twitter accounts) and provides some encouraging links at the bottom which is probably the smartest move. Also note the “if you believe <user> is engaging in abusive behavior on Twitter” link:

It was great to see this improvement but I am sure someone at Twitter is thinking “Duh, why didn’t we think of this sooner.”

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Tags: Email Notices, Joe Hackman, Joesgonesocial, Tweets, Twitter
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How to use Amplify.com a quick Primer (Video)

I created this video for the benefit of people who are new to Amplify.com.

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Tags: Amplify, Amplify.com, Joe Hackman, Joesgonesocial, Twitter
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Nurph vs Chatroulette battle for top web handshake

Ok there is quite a bit of buzz over the infamous Chatroulette, a site where random people are placed in a video chat session together. I personally don’t have the stomach to even try it since I’ve heard “found mostly depressed looking guys and naked men (about 1 in 5 shuffles was a guy’s bits)” source: Chris Brogan. Not my idea of a fun or practical application. Nurph on the other hand is exceptionally cool for several reasons:

• It’s easy to setup
• It works with most websites
• Easy authentication
• Realtime text chat, no video or audio

Easy Setup
The setup is very simple, you go to Nurph’s website and type in the url you wish to add a chat to. You can then use that URL in the future to access chat at that site or you can even create a link on the website to that url. For example if you click this link, you should be connected to the chat on this blog. If you see me online be sure to say hello.

Compatibility
I tested Nurph with Chrome, Mozilla and Internet Explorer. The only issue I had was a flash component (my cumulus tag cloud) overlaid the chat window. I was able to resolve that by enlarging the browser window. There may even be a setting to change the “always on top” aspect of Flash components. Please comment on this post if you are familiar with a way to do that. Websites that require authentication such as Facebook do not currently work with Nurph. No doubt that will improve with time as the product matures.

Authentication
In the battle for authentication dominance, I always find Twitter to be the most comfortable. Fortunately while Nurph is in beta you can only use Twitter to access it unless you are part of the beta program. Just use the connect with Twitter button, but make sure you are logged in to Twitter first.

Text Chat
My comments about Chatroulette were largely in jest, but plain old text chat is a good handshake medium. Rather than investing in voice or video chat via the anonymous web you have a simple medium by which to say hello and assess your new contacts before taking that step. For that reason Nurph is a great way to “shake hands” without committing too much. Since it is multiple user you can also see how the participants behave with groups.

Video
I am a screen-cast addict, if I need to explain how to do something a lot of times I just record a quick screen-cast and send that. Here is a Youtube video I created where I talk about Nurph and demonstrate how simple it is to use.

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Tags: Joe Hackman, Joesgonesocial, Nurph, Tips, Twitter
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Resources for Amplify.com Users

This is for my growing group of friends at Amplify.com or anyone curious to check out a fast growing and innovative social networking site. Many great ideas have come up and we’ve had some amazing discussions as a result. For the people who are just joining us, here are a few things that are available to make the experience better:

Twitter

Joe’s Amplify List on Listorious – if you’re not on the list @hackmanj on Twitter, comment on this post, or use the recommend someone on Listorious. Here is the original post that started the ball rolling on this, thanks to @socialsprouts if you see anyone that is not representing good netiquette that is on this list, please let me know so I can either warn or remove them.

LinkedIn

It would be great if more of our fellow Amplify.com users joined us via the LinkedIn group.

Podcasts

Amplify’s CEO Eric Goldstein was gracious enough to be interviewed on my podcast 3 times since I joined. We have also recently setup a monthly feature where the community meet monthly for a podcast with Eric. These episodes will be the third Thursday of every month at 2PM Pacific/5PM Eastern time.

1. A good introduction to Amplify – aired 1/27/2010
2. An introduction to the 3/3/2010 changes to Amplify.com – aired 3/3/2010
3. Eric Goldstein CEO of Amplify.com and the Amplify Community – aired 4/21/2010
4. Scheduled monthly chat 6/7/2010 on Blog Talk Radio
5. Eric Goldsten and Louis Gray on the Mobile App and Amplify.com – aired 6/16/2010
6. Eric Goldstein and the Amplify Community on Email Posting – aired 7/22/2010
7. Scheduled community chat w/ Eric Goldstein 8/16/2010

Youtube Videos

The night I started using Amplify it was an instant hit with me so I created a screencast and blog article about the site. Here is the playlist I have assembled of the amplify.com related videos on Youtube.

Articles

I need some help with this list, I know several people have done some nice write-ups and would like to add them all to this post.

1. Here is the Amplify category on this blog.
2. Diane Rayfield did a fantastic “Feature” article on Amplify
3. Check out this great description of Amplify.com by Maggie Greyson
4. Great post by Paul Simbeck-Hampson “Sparking Conversation Naturally“
5. A fantastic post in response to a question by Louis Gray about Amplify.com’
6. A nice article about How to Create an Effective Amplify Page by Eric Miltsch.
7. New 8/11/2010 – Power tip by Svartling on using the news feed.
8. New 8/11/2010 – How to use Amplify for your Social Network by Russ Jackson.
9. A an example of using Amplify.com for Crowd Sourcing by Paul Simbeck-Hampson.

Not on Amplify?

Join us, it is a thriving and exciting community that operates on a extremely useful and feature rich social networking platform. I’ve met some incredibly intelligent and passionate people on the site and you will too. If you do join, be sure to send me a note so I can make sure to add you to the Twitter list, etc. Here is the link to my Amplog.

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Tags: Amplify, Amplify.com, Facebook, Joe Hackman, Joesgonesocial, LinkedIn, Social network service, Twitter
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3 Surprise Benefits of Amplify.com

I was posting to a discussion about Amplify being a “better Posterous” and decided I would share it here on my blog also for the people who follow my blog. I basically moved from “living” on Facebook and Twitter to Amplify this week. I still access Facebook and Twitter in fact in ways the move has enhanced my experience. Here is the post, there is a link after to the original thread if you want to see what others have said.

Wow great discussion! The hook for me that exceeded Facebook, Twitter, etc. was the fact that there is a GREAT community interaction and the site is absolutely unique in what it can do right now. Of course over time I am sure the team here (and elsewhere) will work to innovate and disrupt but I hope that amplify will continue to build on the strength of the conversation portion. Prior to making Amplify my home, I bounced between Facebook and Twitter. For me this was a really simple shift because I can still selectively engage those audiences but also just casually share the stuff that I read throughout the day.

There are some special things about Amplify for me that I had not anticipated at all, and would have stuck around anyway:

1. I made some great Quality friends quickly (the site attracts energetic, kind, supportive and savvy people).
2. I had a big increase in my mentions and interaction on Twitter. (Go figure!)
3. It encouraged me to use a couple of other sites a little more (sites I was basically passively updating already via ping.fm) Friendfeed, Posterous.

In summary Amplify is a site were individuals of all skill levels can effectively communicate without being forced into a closed system (like Facebook). In my view it has the most important aspects of Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed right now. It will also truly “amplify” the effectiveness of your message, ideas and experience.

A bit long winded and worthy of a blog entry on my site, let the ctrl+a, ctrl+c begin! <EOM>

See this entire discussion.

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Tags: Amplify.com, Joe Hackman, Joesgonesocial, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Amplify, Facebook, Social Media Strategy, Twitter, community | View Comments

With an Abundance of tools my Internet use evolves (podcast)

Today while exchanging some tweets with @simbeckhampson I recognized that my social media and web footprint has evolved over time and in the process different tools have been useful for different things:

1. Facebook is where most of my real life friends are. I also find it more personal interaction wise.
2. I get news from Twitter, share news and interesting info. More informal interaction wise.
3. Blogtalkradio has opened up a nice niche for conversations with interesting people.
4. Cinchcast – I love to call in and get ideas out while driving then I share it later.
5. Youtube – I am big on screencasts and moving towards more personal messages (videos of me mixed in)
6. Amplify – I am making new friends, sharing more what I am reading more and selectively share to FB, Twitter, etc.

These aren’t all the tools I use, for me the key is really the data that comes in via Email. I need to re-evaluate my use of Google Reader and RSS also for incoming information. Here is the podcast that was inspired by my conversations with Paul:

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Tags: Blogtalkradio, Joe Hackman, Joesgonesocial, Podcast, Tips, Twitter
Posted in Amplify, Blogging, Facebook, Podcasts, Social Media Strategy, Tools, Twitter, Wordpress | View Comments

Protecting Yourself from Social Media

This article was too good to pass up, an important and timely read for many people. I wonder if it will have you consider some things you had not previously:

http://bit.ly/6qiDQD

Thanks to @ciarianfoley for sharing this on Twitter.

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Tags: Social Media Security, Twitter
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Check out my Twittercloud #tweetcloud

This is a neat app for Twitter. It allows you to create a cloud based on common words you use in your Tweets.

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Tags: @hackmanj, Joe Hackman, tweetcloud, Twitter, twittercloud
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