Gary Vaynerchuk has a great video about following your passion and not a buck. He talks about how those who are passionate but not as talented as those who are just out for a buck in an industry will still do better because they will put in more effort and in the long run do better. Gary does a better job of explaining. I’d like to hear your POV. Post your comments below:

Okay, now I am a fan of John C. Dvorak. I’m a big fan of Cranky Geeks and TWIT and his blog. But I do think he is a bit full of cow poop sometimes. Especially when he decides from one bad experience withe “SEO” that SEO and those practicing it are a bunch of crackpots. Now I respect his opinion, but I really think Dvorak is shooting from the hip here with no real aim. Now I have to admit that he is a bit of an aquired taste, and though many might think he’s a total jerk and crank, I feel that he’s just a bit off with this accusation. Mark Jackson over at Search Engine Watch has a great column responding to Dvorak‘s crankyness. Here’s a excerpt:

An article in a major publication last week disparaged SEO, calling it “snake oil” once again. How did the columnist decide SEO doesn’t work, and that its practitioners are a bunch of snake oil salesmen? Well, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (I hasten to give him any attention, as that’s what he and his editor are after) had rewritten his URLs to make them search engine friendly, but lost traffic in his efforts.

Here’s his exact quote:

Search engine optimization (SEO) has turned into a big business, and from what I can tell it’s the modern version of snake oil. The unproven nonsense spewed by so-called “SEO Experts” simply doesn’t work. And worse, it’s screwing up the elegance of the Web.

Ugh. Here we go again.

First off, dear readers, I exchanged e-mails with his editor-in-chief, and even offered to rebuke this column in a column of my own on his Web site. I just can’t let false claims such as his stand uncontested. When people write columns like this, it affects our industry.

We, as an industry, accept that many people have jumped on the SEO bandwagon, calling themselves SEOs when they have a difficult time even writing compelling title tags. We know that some people will quickly respond to RFPs, get a prospect to cut a few checks, and deliver little in return. Then, there are those of us who have studied for years to understand what good SEO is and worked hours helping our clients achieve measurable results.

OK, time to respond to the column. Begrudgingly, I’ll link to it so you can read it for yourself. At least we can discuss something that works for SEO: good URL structure.

Optimizing URL Structure

The columnist refers to the “fact” that long URLs don’t work. Here’s what he wrote:

My blog had typical, efficient WordPress default URLs, such as http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=3100 or some such thing. Now on my current blog, that particular URL — which used the simple story ID number to access the post — has been supposedly SEO-optimized behind this URL: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2005/10/20/hollywood-unions-want-cut-of-itunes-pie/.

From what I can tell, this guy did at least one thing wrong — and possibly two — with this one element of proper SEO. I wish I could speak with him directly to confirm my suspicions, and perhaps even teach him a thing or two about what real SEO involves (much more than just one thing).

First, there’s really nothing “wrong” with his original URL structure (/blog/?p=3100). There are only two trailing backslashes.

So what if the URL has a couple of dynamic characters in it (the question mark and equals sign are referred to as “dynamic” characters). Search engines nowadays do fine indexing and ranking these. So long as you’re keeping your content as close to the root as you can, you should be in good shape.

However, it’s not “optimal.” How do we make this optimal? We “optimize.”

via Ignorance: The Trouble with People Who Claim SEO is Snake Oil – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

Image Credit: Max-Bro.net

Today across the Web, people have been buzzing about the new Terms of Service over at Facebook. Upon reading the TOS, the legalese makes it appear that Facebook owns your content once it’s put on the service. The TOS also states that Facebook can use the data for whatever it wants.

Now, as expected, people were outraged at this new clause. There were strong debates across not only throughout the Internet, but the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere.

Finally, Facebook head honsho Mark Zuckerberg, obviously seeing the chaos that the TOS has caused, released the release below on the Facebook blog to set the record straight (the post is below in complete). Users own their data on the service.

Now in the post, he says that they are trying make the rules more understandable. They are? Did I miss something.

I’d  like to hear your take below in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I’d like to address those here. I’ll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people’s information.

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.

We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.

Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.

We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I’ll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.

via The Facebook Blog | Facebook.

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame had some good insight today and put it on video. It’s about fighting through those times when you just want to throw up your arms and say “Forget this” and getting the job done — right. Gary’s use of the Internet to produce his videos is also another good example of using social media to promote your views, products and build a community. It’s a good watch. I’d like your insights, post your comments below.

Social media guru Perry Belcher has a great new video out on how to organize your thoughts coming out of your brain. Check out the video below. It’s really neat how Perry is using YouTube to share his messages with his fans and build his social media chops. I’d like to hear your comments on it. Post them below as well. Thanks!

Image credit: greek-islands.us

So Twitter really does have power, it really works. This month I got a shock in the mail. My Comcast bill arrived with a surprise. Apparently my promotional period had ended, sending my TV (not HDTV yet) from $39.99 to $95.65. I was horrified and immediately began to complain on Twitter. I shot a quick note to Frank Eliason at his Twitter handle @comcastcares about the situation.Within minutes he said he’d look into it for me. I then gave customer service a call. I have to admit I was less than impressed with the billing department’s response to my quandry. The first lady said there was nothing that they could do (which I knew was a load of bull) and when I talked to the supervisor she passed me off again to the retention department. After a day of being bounced around the corporate phone system, I managed to get some kind of promotion, but I was still not impressed with the outcome. I decided to wait a few more days and see if Frank could do anything.

Like many areas, Verizon Fios is being installed. The thought of switching, I admit, began to enter my mind. Though the product loyalty that was developed by Frank’s hard work on Twitter made it really hard to bare leaving Comcast. Yes I admit it, the old saying is true: “You buy from people you like.” And well I really like how Frank and his team are always just a few minutes away from solving my problems on their network and it was this safety net that made me contact Frank and his team in the first place.

Image credit: Shel Israel

As promised he said he would look into it for me and sure enough within a day an angel from Comcast (I’ll leave his name out because I don’t think we wants to be bombarded with emails or inquiries) wrote me an email and set me up with a deal that I couldn’t refuse. Let’s just say I originally though what he was writing was a joke. It was that good of an offer and didn’t involve signing over my soul.

This situation proves that not only is Comcast rehabbing it’s customer service through mediums like Twitter and the other social networks, but they are doing their best to please those customers who might have left if they decided to not give a hoot (sorry for the bad bird pun). Though they still have lots of work to do on their phone customer service. Their presence online has definitely helped them greatly.

The moral of this story is simple. Don’t judge a social networking/media service based on its naysayers and criticism, judge it based on your experience with the service yourself. If you’re not interested in it fine. But don’t put down those who do use it until you’ve tried it for yourself.

It is all about community building and growing your “social” network. Twitter and these other networking platforms are like traditional networking, it’s how you work it that makes it valuable.

I’d like to hear your feedback and comments. Please post them below!

Enjoy! Post your comments below!

Social Media’s uses for Business and Personal Gain from Seth Goldstein on Vimeo.

Image: Flickr/kpmarek

With revenue down and marketing budgets tight, there’s never been a better time to generate some free publicity for your business. So, put your Public Relations hat on and get started promoting your products and services. Here are some tips and PR “best practices” to help get you started.

Share the news
The key to gaining exposure in the media is to share information about your company, products and services.  Don’t wait for the news release on your website to be discovered. You need to proactively reach out to media contacts with news and information about your business. This can be accomplished through the distribution of formal news releases, or with a simple phone call, email or “What I’m working on” post on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Be relevant
Relevancy will help you obtain media coverage. The more you can tie your activities to a major news story or emerging issue, the greater your opportunity for coverage. For example, in the Fall of 2007, I was able to generate incredible coverage for one client by tapping in to the media buzz surrounding the lead paint tainted toy crisis. My client was a gourmet grocery store, which may initially seem like an unlikely match given the nature of the crisis. But, by helping them host an event to provide free lead testing as a community service for concerned parents, I got them several pre-event interviews, as well as event coverage by three television stations, two newspapers and a local radio station, as well.  Not only did the event create a huge amount of media coverage, both pre and post-event, it also drove consumer traffic to their store and website.

Communicate and repeat
In any marketing activity, repetition is critical for success. Your submission may not get picked-up the first time, but don’t let that dissuade you. Keep trying. If they didn’t think your submission was interesting one day, they may on another. Circumstances change and so do attitudes in newsrooms. Keep sharing your updates. Eventually, your story will gain coverage.

Think big
Your story may or may not merit national television coverage, or a guest appearance on Oprah, but you need to allow the networks and producers to make that call. One thing is certain, you will never receive major media coverage if they don’t know about you. Spread your message far and wide.

Adhere to these PR “best practices” and you will generate substantial coverage for your business. I’m looking forward to reading about you in the news!

Tanya C. Bamford is the President of TCB Marketing LLC–a Marketing Services firm based in suburban Philadelphia, PA. Follow Tanya’s posts on Twitter @TCBMarketing.

TwiTip.com has a great post on what the differences and what the similarities are between Facebook and Twitter. The article highlights the pros and cons of both services and what type of person each service appeals to.

A very interesting article. Below are the pros and cons of each service. Take a look.

Twitter Pros

* Easy to navigate and update, link to and promote anything

* Reach far beyond your inner circle of friends

* One feed pools all users; anyone can follow anyone else unless blocked

* Pure communication tool, rapid responsiveness

* You don’t have to be logged in to get updates; you can just use an RSS reader

* Very interactive, extensible messaging platform with open APIs

* Many other applications being developed (Twitterific, Summize, Twhirl, etc.)

* Potential SMS text messaging revenue from wireless networks (although Twitter states they are not currently getting any cut)

* Potential future advertising and/or enterprise subscription-based revenue streams\* With its “thin” overhead, Twitter is probably more scalable than Facebook, giving it a cost advantageTwitter Cons

* Limited functionality; find people, send brief messages, direct replies

* Limited to 140 characters per update

* Not all people find it immediately useful

* Over-emphasis on follower counts

* Easily abused for spam and increasing the noise level

* Relatively smaller installed user base

* As yet no readily apparent monetization strategy

Facebook Pros

* Application mashup; find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, etc.

* Most people can quickly grasp the value of connecting with friends, family and established contacts; some people report they use Facebook instead of email and IM

* More emphasis on deep connections with others vs. who has the most connections

* “True Friends” feature increases your transparency to selected connections; almost like having private and public profiles

* Huge, rapidly growing installed user base

* Inherit stickiness, third party applications, “gift giving” and personal data collection make Facebook a powerful advertising platform

Facebook Cons

* More difficult to navigate and update

* Requires investment of time to realize sustained benefit

* Opt in model requires a user to allow others to connect

* Less immediate responses; unless you stay logged on continually

* Overhead of mashup and “thick” applications could limit scalability, bloat cost structure

via Facebook vs Twitter.

A must watch: