CMO Guide to Social Media.

Ping-O-Matic is your one stop shop to quick pings for your blog posts to search engines.

KK — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:56:11 +0000

With organic content the new focus and king of the hill. Getting noticed for all your content can be as easy as a single posting to Ping-o-Matic. http://pingomatic.com/. This site will allow you to ping over 20 key search engines. It also has an area for specialized services.

They also check down stream to be sure the blog is legit and that you are submitting to the ones that are the most relevent to your blog.

Filed under: blog, blog pings, blogger, blogging, Ping-o-Matic Tagged: Blog on social media sites, blog pings, blogs, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, ping-o-matic

How can you get your blog indexed by Google in 24 hours?

KK — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:41:57 +0000

Getting Google to index your blog posts quickly will help get the traction you want for your blogging efforts. Many times the editorial staff who writes and posts the blogs, leave out these key steps. Many do not know you need to do this. Some say it now happen automatically. My advice is to go over each step for your blogs and see where you cam pick up improvements.

The article that I point most to is one from Quick Online Tips . “Quickonline tips Guest post by Andrew Rondeau
“How can you get your blog indexed by Google in 24 hours? There is a lot of conflicting search engine optimization information available, especially when it comes to trying to beat the natural ranking systems and having your blog rank high in Google right from the start. While it’s possible to make a blog and have it indexed almost straight away, most people go about doing so with a poor overall strategy for success.

Ranking high on Google is all about long-term thinking, and going out to win everything in the first day will often see you wasting time and opportunity without getting anything in return. However, it’s very much possible to be indexed by Google in 24 hours or less. After you make a blog, just follow these simple ideas and you’ll see your website show up in the search results within a day.

1: Submit your blog to Google

Obviously you’ve got to submit your new blog to Google before it can be indexed. Some free blogging platforms will submit your blog for free, while others, especially self-hosted blogging platforms, require you to do it yourself. Either way, it’s an easy 5-minute job that can be done alongside other, more time-consuming tasks. Use the Google webmasters tools to verify your site. Here’s how:

Step 1: Go to google.com/webmasters. Sign in using your Google Account or create an account if you don’t have one already.

Step 2: Add your blog site by clicking the “Add a site” button. Then type in the domain name you wish to add, and click “Continue”.

Step 3: Once added you will need to verify that you own this site. This can be done one of two ways, Meta Tag or Upload a HTML file. The Meta Tag way is, by far the easiest.

Step 4: Meta Tag verification. This method requires you to add a piece of code to your header.php file. Copy the Meta Tag code Google has asked you to copy to your blog site.

Step 5: In your WordPress dashboard go to “Appearance”, then “Editor” using the menu tabs on the left hand side.

Then click on Header (header.php) on the right hand side to open up the header template. Find the tag highlighted, and BELOW it “paste” in the verification Meta tag Google has given you.

Step 6: Then scroll down and click on “Update File”

Step 7: Go back to the Google Webmasters Tool website and click “Verify” and Google will confirm that you own the site.

Step 8: After verifying, Google will display a confirmation page.

2: Submit your blog Sitemap to Google

If you are using WordPress, install the Google XML sitemap plugin that creates a sitemap of your blog that search engines can read.
You now want to add your blog’s sitemap. This is how:

Step 1: From within the Google Webmaster tools website, click on the domain name you have just added and it will open up a Dashboard for your site. On the left hand side menu, click on “Site Configuration” and then “Sitemaps”.

Step 2: Click “Submit a Sitemap” and enter the name of your sitemap. It should be sitemap.xml

It will take a few hours for the sitemaps to be analyzed and added. Then you can return here and make sure there are no errors, see how many URLs are being indexed and the time that Google last visited you. Even without the sitemap you will begin to get a list of the top search queries that your site is being found for, incoming links to your site, and the keywords that Google thinks your site is optimized for.

By verifying your site and adding your blog’s sitemap, you are telling Google your blog has arrived and it will quickly be indexed.

3: Use social bookmarking to generate links right away

Social bookmarking services are a great way to generate links to your new blog in record time. From simple community bookmarking websites to the giants of the web, submitting your website to social bookmarking services like StumbleUpon, Digg and Twitter can help you generate powerful, natural linkbacks. Log on and “favorite” your blog, and be sure to encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same.

4: Get posting on forums

Get your blog link in your forum signature and start posting it on as many forums as you can. Of course, spamming is never a good long-term idea, but some smart, relevant forum posts are a great way to bring in new SEO juice and links for your new blog. For some reason, Google tends to prioritize websites that are generating links already, so get out there and create as many as you possibly can for your new blog.

5: Install SEO plugins for your blog

Most blogs will come with a SEO pack available, and WordPress has a free one for download if you’re having trouble optimizing your blog. Search engine optimization is absolutely essential for generating blog traffic, and without putting time and thought into your SEO efforts it’s easy to lose what could be a great opportunity. Even though we’re focusing on short-term SEO speed, it’s good to think long-term right from the beginning. Download and use the All-in-one-Seo-Pack plugin. Check out my video to optimize your All-in-one-SEO-pack plugin set up: How to use the All in one SEO WordPress plugin to your advantage

Five ideas that take hardly any time will ensure you get you new blog seen and indexed by Google within 24 hours.”

Filed under: blog, blogger, blogging, blogs, indexing blogs, Uncategorized Tagged: Blog on social media sites, blogs, cmoguidetosocialmedia, indexing blogs

Blogging Mistakes for Beginners

KK — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:09:55 +0000

I was researching best practices in blogs the other day and come upon an article that Hubspot did: The Fundamentals of Business Blogging that is worth repeating.

“Seven Easily-Avoided Mistakes for Beginners   1. Never actually launching it: This is likely the most common mistake. Sure, you’ve been meaning to get your blog kicked off. You may have even authored your first article. But guess what, it’s not a blog until you actually publish something.
2. Using a sub-domain (ex: myblog.typepad.com): If you’re going to go to the trouble to start a blog, then you owe it to yourself to get started right. Even if you decide to use one of the many popular free blogging services, you should register your own domain name. There are many reasons for this, but the most important is control over your website URL. This is one of the few decisions about your blog that is going to be difficult to fix later. Trust me on this one, the price is worth it. [Note to self: Add a check to the website grader to let people know when they've made this blunder]
3. Spending too much time on design: Don’t let the design of your blog get you bogged down. Pick one of the many existing templates out there that are free or close to it and go ahead and get started. You can always change templates later. Besides, blogs are fundamentally about content. Aesthetics help, but your first focus should be on authoring great content.
4. Not telling anyone about it: The beginning days of a blog are the hardest. You don’t have anyone linking to you, the search engines are not ranking you (and maybe not even indexing you). So, there’s really only one source of traffic: Direct contact. The best way to get a new blog launched is to tell people in your network that you now have a blog. Many people are a little reluctant to do this becomes it seems vain or boastful. As long as you’re sending the notification to people who have an interest in your topic, there’s nothing wrong with it.
5. Getting discouraged too early: Most things in life worth doing take time. Blogging is no different. You should give yourself at least 6 months (perhaps even a year) to determine what kind of interest there is out there before giving up due to lack of traffic. Early momentum is hard, but once things start moving, lots of things will start working in your favor.
6. Too many widgets: Given how easy it is to add various blog widgets to your blog, it’s tempting to go overboard. Resist the temptation. In the early weeks, focus on the basics: Content, comments, categories and perhaps a blog roll. Save the fancy stuff for later.
7. Monetizing too early: Just because Google makes it easy to throw ads up on your blog doesn’t mean you should. With minimal traffic, the amount of money you are going to make is negligible (probably pennies a day). If you’re serious about blogging, you’ll first focus on building an audience before even attempting to try to make money at it. Trying ads out on your blog too early will reduce the chances of your getting that critical early traffic.

You don’t have to blunder in the beginning of your blogging efforts. HubSpot’s training and support program make it super simple and easy for you.”

This is so true even today, now that Google has changed the way to searched and gives relevance to blogs. Changes in the way to bring blogs to market are in order if you are starting today. If you already have a well established blog that is getting good traffic, then I would not touch it and start a second blog and grow that for the new ways fo the blogging world.

Filed under: blog, blogger, blogging, blogging for women, blogs, Business Blogging, CMO, cmo blog, CMO Guide to social media, CMO social media consultant, cmo with social media experience, CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, Uncategorized Tagged: blogging, Blogging mistakes, Business blogging

Creating a video sitemap for Google search

KK — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:39:20 +0000

Adding video to your website is a key element today, just as adding social media elements is a must do in today’s world of organic search. To gain page one video placement you need to get the video indexed by Google. We all know of pushing an XML site map to gain organic traffic to our content, however many do not know to add a video sitemap, in addition. Check with your webmaster or agency to be sure they know to do this. The Quick Online blog had a great article on this a few months back, and it is worth revisiting or visiting for the first time, especially if you are adding videos to your site or are already using video. The blog also addresses, hosting videos on your site vs feeding from YouTube or DailyMotion.

How to Get Your Videos Indexed by Google by Quick Online blog
March 1st, 2010
Guest post by Keiros.
How to get your videos listed on Google? Have you already noticed while performing a search on Google, those videos thumbnails displayed on the left side of some sites? They are definitely great traffic attractors, and having such a video associated with your site when being on 5th or 6th positions of the search results page may be better in terms of “click-thru-rate” than being on 1st position without it.
There is an additional bonus in having a video associated to your site: on some occasions, Google displays in a block titled “Video results for Keyword“, often on the 3rd or 5th position, several videos, and when it is the case, you can jump several positions and land directly on the first page to join an already existing video results block.

The trick is to find a search argument for which your page is already ranking well but not yet on the first page, with Google displaying a Video Results group on first page: you will benefit from the optimization work of those who made the way to the first page.

Found the perfect search request? All you need to do now is to make your video indexed by Google, and that’s the easiest part !

1.Put a video on your page : I mean a real video, hosted on your site, not on Youtube or DailyMotion. You need a .flv file (or .mpg, .avi, .mp4) and a video plugin that supports this kind of video formats. Jing is perfect to record onscreen action and make nice video tutorials.
2.Create a thumbnail of your video : that’s the thumbnail that Google will display on its search results page, so making a good quality thumbnail out of your video is an important step. Personally, I’ve found that 160×120 gif or jpg works well for that purpose….and they actually don’t need to be extracted from your video. Any image pertinent to the content of your video will make the trick.
3.Create a video sitemap : Video sitemaps are XML files similar to usual sitemaps but using a different syntax. See an example.
4.Submit your video sitemap to Google : Video sitemaps can be submitted in Google Webmaster Tools exactly as a standard sitemap. If you had not yet registered your site in Google Webmaster Tool, that’s the perfect occasion to do it now.

Video Sitemap example

( See HTML on the Quickonline site)

The video-specific XML tags are pretty straightforward, but if you need more detail, you can check this page on Google Webmaster Central: Creating Video Sitemaps. Don’t forget to optimize your video sitemap by inserting your main keywords in the video tags, it will give an additional boost to your ranking if done meaningfully.

Guest author Keiros is an outsourcing and infrastructure management consultant, and a contributor to SEO Chat Forum. You can also write guest posts and share your Google tips with our readers.

Filed under: CMO, cmo blog, CMO Guide to social media, CMO social media consultant, cmo with social media experience, CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, Creating a site map, creating a site map on google, Creating video sitemaps, exec for social media, experts in social media, Google webmaster tools, online marketing strategy, online strategy, online video, Organic search, organic traffic, SEO, social media expert, Social media for executives, social media guide, social media platforms, social media speaker, social media strategist, social media strategy, video for social media, video for web Tagged: CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, Creating a video sitemap, Google webmaster tools, organic traffic, video, video site map

How to use Ping.FM to be able to update all your social statuses from one place.

KK — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:04:04 +0000

Looking for ways to streamline the updates and set ups for your social media programs? The Social Media Guide blog recently did a very good and detailed review of Ping.FM. I am always looking for ways to multi task in the social media world and this is a very good solution to issues all CMO’s face when it comes to updates and changes and how to get them on each and every social media tool we use in our marketing mix.

You or your team spend hours filling in profiles, joining groups,updating statuses as the list of social media tools grow in your marketing mix. So check out this option and the detailed instructions that they gave us.

“How to use Ping.fm

Ping.fm, Social Media — By Matthew Tommasi

There are so many social networking sites around today and even more appearing on a weekly basis.

If you are like me, it is likely that you are a member of more than one social network like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. If you are one of the hardcore you could be a member of many, many more.

How many hours would you have spent filling in your profiles, joining groups and updating your statuses within these social circles? It starts to add up.

Wouldn’t it be good to be able to update all your social statuses from one place? Well you can with Ping.fm.

Ping.fm allows you to send updates to all, or just a handful of your favourite sites. Updates can be made from your browser, email or sms. If you have an iPhone and are using the Twitter application Tweetie, checkout my guide on how to integrate Ping.fm with Tweetie.

This guide will show you how to save time and be more efficient when it comes to updating your social statuses.

Firstly, you will need to make sure you have added all your social networks. For this guide, I have only added Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

There are three different methods of posting – status updates, micro-blogs and blogging.. which I found a little confusing when it came to configuring my social networks. Do I set them as status only, or micro-blogging only, or both, or what? And what about updating via email?

So I decided to test these out to see how they worked for real. Here is what I have found when testing out the various posting methods of Ping.fm.

To check out the details go to:

http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/2009/05/10/how-to-use-pingfm/

Filed under: 2011 marketing plans, CMO social media consultant, cmo with social media experience, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, exec for social media, experts in social media, social media blog, social media consutant, social media expert, social media guide, social media platforms, social media strategist, social media strategy, social media touch points, The Social Medida Guide Tagged: Blog on social media sites, CMO, CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, exec for social media, Intergrate twitter into online marketing strategy, Ping.FM, Social media for executives, social media plaforms, The Social Media Guide

Social Media web traffic stats mean changes in social media direction

KK — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:06:17 +0000

When the landscape is changing so fasts in social media, a stat like 41% of social media on Facebook would be a key driver for the 2011 marketing plans. However for me the interesting fact is the growth of the others like Ning, and Hulu. The fact that MySpace has held it own and has not declined, is a definite relook, were many had started to count them out. The flattening of Twitter trend is also one to take into consideration when planning to use it in your social media mix. The term – Social media mix, is the key to 2011 planning, it is not longer a one tool plan as an add-on that will work. Social Media mix is now my new mantra.

Mashables article on social media stats gives a road map to next steps. By Jolie O’Dell 14

“Facebook Now Commands 41% of Social Media Traffic

Facebook and YouTube are displacing rivals and taking over the social web, according to data we’ve just received from comScore.

In addition to showing massive and continued traffic growth throughout 2009 and the beginning of 2010, Facebook and YouTube continued to capture the highest volume of social web traffic. Twitter also garnered a ton of mainstream attention, helping the company increase the number of visitors to its site by fivefold over the course of the year.

Taking a look at the unique visitors charts, we see the widespread migration from MySpace to Facebook even more clearly. As of March 2010, Facebook traffic made up 41% of all traffic on a list of popular social destinations. MySpace was in second place, capturing around 24% of traffic. Gmail had 15%, and Twitter had 8%. However, during the same period in 2009, MySpace was in the lead with 38% of site visits over Facebook’s 33%.

While Gmail continues to show slow year-over-year growth and sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter experienced exponential gains over the course of the past 12 months, MySpace’s traffic has been completely stagnant. Facebook, on the other hand, has exhibited strong growth and high volumes of traffic. Take a look at the difference between site traffic in March 2009 and March 2010 for these social sites:

comScore is an acknowledged leader in digital analytics and intelligence. comScore’s data for this post are based on a hybrid of site analytics and audience measurement for U.S. users at home, work and school.”

Filed under: 2010 marketing plans, 2011 marketing plans, CEO and CMO with social media expertise, cmo blog, CMO Guide to social media, CMO social media consultant, CMO with social media expertise, Face book, facebook, facebook tips, Hulu, linkedin, ning, social media blog, social media consutant, social media expert, Social media for executives, social media guide, social media speaker, social media strategist, social media web traffic stats, Twitter Tagged: CMO, CMO learning social media, CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, facebook intergration, facebook stats, hulu traffic, Intergrate twitter into online marketing strategy, Myspace traffic, Ning taffic, Social Media Mix, social media traffic, social media web traffic stats, Twitter

Adding Group SMS text messages to your marketing or communications plans

KK — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:03:28 +0000

Finding ways to leverage SMS or Text marketing is always a challenge on how to do carefully selected text messages to targeted audiences. Messages like getting a key message out to your sales force or you need to change a location or time for an event and to grow customer engagement. Broadcasting text alerts to your subscribers and have it also push to your Twitter, Facebook and website visitors in one stroke is a valuable tool to consider. Mashable recently covered this subject.

“ Christina Warren from Mashable blog has done a very good outline of a way to easily do this.

TextMarks Makes Sending Mass Text Messages Easy

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: TextMarks

Quick Pitch: TextMarks group text messaging services turn any mobile phone into a powerful marketing tool.

Genius Idea: TextMarks makes it easy to create SMS marketing campaigns by letting users send a text message with a custom keyword of your choice to 41411. You can also use TextMarks auto-post service to send out SMS messages to subscribers and also update Facebook() and Twitter().

As the Red Cross’s efforts in raising money for Haiti proved, text messages can be a powerful way to engage others and to spread information. It’s not just about joke-of-the-day subscriptions or other nonsense that you see at 2AM on TV — real money and real causes can be publicized through text.

TextMarks is a service that makes it really easy to set-up a mobile campaign to broadcast messages or updates to users that opt-in to your service by first texting a keyword.

What we like about TextMarks is that the service is easy to set-up and affordable. You can try out the service for free and send unlimited ad-supported messages each month, and ad-free plans start at $9.95 a month. For small businesses or small groups like churches or clubs, that’s a really nice option.

We also like that you can update Twitter and Facebook with the same messages you send out to other users. That way, if you’re using messages to keep people updated with scheduling information or other time-sensitive info, the message can go out across all of your social channels.”

Filed under: 2010 marketing plans, adding facebook to your marketing mix, brand monitoring in social media, CMO, cmo blog, CMO Guide to social media, CMO social media consultant, cmo twitter guide, cmo with social media experience, CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, CMOs that twitter, customer engagement, customer service, Customer service strategies with SMS, customer service tweets, customer service twitter, employee engagement, exec for social media, experts in social media, Instant messaging strategy, Intergrate SMS texting into my marketing plans Tagged: CMO, CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, customer engagement, customer service, group SMS texting tools, how do I send group SMS texts, how to I send group texts, organic traffic, social media expert

5 Best Printer Friendly WordPress Plugins

KK — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:20:15 +0000

Have you had trouble printing out information from a blog article? I have and so when I saw this article on top Wordpress plug ins for printer friendly documents, I was all over it. Take a look at the: Quick online tips blog. They had great info for the options for printer friendly wordpress plug ins for your blog.

5 Best Printer Friendly WordPress Plugins
Posted: 22 Mar 2010 06:55 AM PDT
Guest post by Tom Walker.
“Do you know which are the best printer friendly WordPress plugins? When you are in the process of creating a WordPress blog, trying to get your head around all of the jargon and available plugins can seem quite daunting. To put it simply, a plugin is designed to help you achieve more with your blog and can make many tasks a whole lot simpler.

When you have visitors to your blog it is often the case that they would like to print out information to use either immediately or in the future. This could involve details about your company, contact numbers or email addresses, or general information that they have found useful and would like to keep as a reference.
If you have tried to print information from a blog before, then you will know how many pages end up coming out of the printer, many of which are useless, and sometimes even the full width of the page doesn’t print out. However, there are some extremely useful plugins that you can get that will help to make your blog printer friendly.
Best Printer Friendly WordPress Plugins
Most plugins can be used immediately to help improve the success and look of your site. Here are some of the best plugins available and we have outlined some of the features to give you a better understanding and to help you decide if they would be useful on your blog.
1. PrintWhatYouLike
This plugin is a great way to ensure that your blog prints out in a print-friendly manner for your customers or potential clients. It works by automatically formatting your blog for printing, but it also has some additional benefits as well. It will allow you to save a blog page as a PDF file, individually customise a page, and create your own layout for printing.
2. VoucherPress
If you would like to be able to offer discount vouchers or special deals to your customers and visitors, this plugin will allow you to customise your own individual vouchers that can then be downloaded and printed. One of the advantages of this plugin for those wishing to create a potential client base for email marketing purposes is that you can set the parameters to require email addresses and individual logins. This could very well set your WordPress blog up to be far more successful in the long run.
Another advantage of using the voucher or token system is that once downloaded, a specific voucher cannot be downloaded again. You could also place limits on the number of offers available, once the limit has been reached the offer will cease. This allows you greater control over specials and promotions, if you so choose.
3. PrintFriendly
This plugin is exactly as its name suggests, a button that can be added to your WordPress blog to enable potential customers and clients to easily print your pages in a friendly manner. Visitors familiar with the web will appreciate this add on, as they know they will be able to print exactly what they want, without multiple sheets of paper being used and wasting ink. This plugin will also allow you the ability to remove any imposing pictures when printing leaving you with a printout of information only.
4. Blog2Print
If you are extremely pleased with your blog and think it would have some value as a book, it is now possible to turn all of your blog posts that you have made into a book. It is up to you whether you would like to actually hold this book in your hands physically, or download and save it as a PDF document. If you would like it in a hardcopy, then it will cost you money, however the PDF version is free. If you wish to print the PDF, it is important to note that it is currently formatted to an A5 paper size only, and this could be a disadvantage for some.
5. Cleanprint
The use of this plugin will provide your readers with many advantages and will promote your blog as one that is thoughtful and professional. Having pages that have been optimised for printing, and showing readers that this is the case, could set your blog apart in terms of convenience and repeat visitors. This plug in will also enable you to customise the logo that will appear at the top of each printed page and will omit useless on-screen details that the reader doesn’t need on their printed page. Imagine your blog post coming out of the printer looking like a page straight out of a magazine, advertising your product or service. If this appeals to you, then this plugin is a must for your blog.”
This guest post was written by Tom Walker for Quickonline tips, a blogger who writes for a UK based specialist in ink, toners, paper and other supplies for the creative industry called Cartridge Save. You can subscribe to their blog to keep up with his posts on art, design and technology. You can also share WordPress tips and write a guest article here.

Filed under: blog, blogs, CMO, CMO Guide to social media, CMO with social media expertise, cmoguidetosocialmedia.com, wordpress, wordpress add on web sites Tagged: blogs, printer blog plug ins, printer friendly plugins, wordpress, wordpress addons

Foursquare vs. Gowalla location based mobile side by side look.

KK — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:18:30 +0000

I was talking to a CMO friend about the difference between Foursquare and Gowalla. Now she had not heard of either of these, thus a chart is worth a thousand words and Mashable did a wonderful job with a compare and contrast for the blog below. Note that is a few months old and the area has grown up a lot in the past few months, so it is a must be in area for companies and individuals.

You can compete for mayorships of your favorite game or topic. Being the mayor has become the new hey are you on Twitter, that was the buzz last year. Also look at Brightkite, Loopt and Yelp in this space.

Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown

Based in New York City, Shane Snow is a graduate student in Digital Media at Columbia University and founder of Scordit.com. He’s fascinated with all things geeky, particularly social media and shiny gadgets he’ll never afford.

Just when you thought you had enough social networks in your life, two hot new ones are vying for your attention. Combine the benefits of sites like Yelp (), Twitter (), and Google Latitude, add in social gaming and some privacy measures, and you have the recipe that Foursquare (), the app that’s been called “next year’s Twitter,” by Mashable’s() own Pete Cashmore, and its chief competitor, Gowalla (), are cooking. Each has attracted a rapidly growing user base in 2009, and each is rushing madly to beat the other to your smartphone in 2010.

A Quick History

Many of the world’s great inventions – television for example – have been developed in parallel, unbeknown to their authors. Both Foursquare and Gowalla started development in late 2008, and both launched in Austin at SXSW in March this year. At the time, Foursquare stole the show, drowning out any fanfare that the then-buggy Gowalla tried to muster.

When asked if he was nervous when he heard about Foursquare’s simultaneous launch, Gowalla founder Josh Williams said, “On the contrary, I felt like the presence of other innovative location services was simply confirmation that we might be onto something interesting.”

Nine months and millions of dollars of funding later, Gowalla has positioned itself as a serious contender in the space. Bugs have been ironed out, and according to Williams, Gowalla is now seeing 20,000 checkins a day. While each app has its own specialties, they share some remarkable similarities, even in the liner notes:

I’m not sure who ripped off whom on this one, but at least we all love everyone!

Which Should You Use?

Regardless of who developed what first, these networks may soon work their way into your own social circles. The big question: Which should you use?

The answer may simply be, “Whichever one your friends are using.” But if you’re the early adopter in the group, the blow-by-blow comparison below can help you sway your social circle to sign up for the one that fits you best.

Cells shaded in orange indicate a feature that favors Gowalla, those in blue favor Foursquare, while crosshatching indicates a toss-up. However, opinions will vary on this, so please tell us what you think in the comments.

As you can see, Gowalla trumps Foursquare in design and availability, but Foursquare takes the cake when it comes to check-in location accuracy, device support, friend management, and value added features like a city guide, and to-do list. Both apps are equally impressive in the way they dole out in-game and real-life perks and rewards.

The Problem with Gowalla

While Gowalla is very cool looking, my main beef is its tendency to emphasize you more, while Foursquare emphasizes your friends. One of the best things these apps have over other social networks is the ability to meet and interact with new, real people, meet up physically with your actual friends, and get recommendations from people you trust. I’m not saying you can’t do this with Gowalla, just that Foursquare seems to do it better. However, for those who enjoy the Pokemon-style gaming aspect, Gowalla with its pins and item swapping, is a definite first choice.

Also, likely because of Gowalla’s slow start, although the service is available everywhere, even in New York City, where I live I rarely check in somewhere where an actual Gowalla user is also checked in. I bump into Foursquare users all over the place, though. If this were the board game Risk, Foursquare would be the guy who’s got 1,000 armies in Australia() while Gowalla has one army everywhere else. Unless Gowalla is really lucky with the dice, it’s probably only a matter of time before it gets edged out everywhere else too.

As the location-based battle rages on, keep an eye on semi-competitors like Loopt and Brightkite () who may soon enter this particular fray. “I think both Foursquare and Gowalla are great apps – using the real world as the backdrop for a game is a lot of fun,” Loopt CEO Sam Altman recently confessed. “It’s probably a safe assumption that we’ll add some gaming elements.”

Filed under: Uncategorized, yelp Tagged: brightkite, Foursquare, gowalla, loopt, mashable, yelp

What other blogs are saying about you and your products.

KK — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:10:35 +0000

Blogs and monitoring of blogs and what is being said about you is a hot topic these days. How do you monitor? Do you pay to monitor? What tools are available to you to monitor blogs and what is being said about you or your company is all the discussion in the CMO’s mind.

Social Mouths blog had some good ideas of free listening posts for your products and services, beyond the paid services for social media monitoring such as Radian 6 and CrimsonHexagon.

Here is the short list URLs and Free blog listening tools:

Paid Services:

Here is the blog I was reading on the subject.

Social Mouths blog

“Do You Know What Other Blogs Are Saying About You?

in social media

Do you know if you are being mentioned on other blogs? Did you know there are ways of tracking this? And, why is this important anyways?

In this post, I’ll explain why paying attention to what other blogs say is important and how to be aware of these mentions.

So let’s get started…

Why You Should Care

SEO

When you get mentioned by another blog, the author usually links back to your blog/site and as you know, getting backlinks is one of the most important things you can do to your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as they can improve your page ranking. The search engines want to know if your site is relevant.

Sentiment

The next thing you need to worry about is sentiment. Is the comment positive or negative? Of course you don’t want people saying something negative about you or your services. When you track these mentions at least you have the opportunity to participate, maybe try to do something to turn an unhappy customer into a happy one. Damage control.

If it’s a positive mention, it is also a good opportunity to engage in the conversation.

Reciprocity

Be human. Be thankful and participate by leaving a comment or giving the post a tweet. Not to make you feel obligated but return the favor if you can, there is a good chance the other blog is somehow related to your topic.

Don’t ignore it, keep this blog in mind.

Let’s Look At An Example

Herbert from Penn State | Outreach Marketing did a very, very nice piece sharing a post from SocialMouths on his “Why Is Social Media Not Working For You” (Thanks Herbert).

OK, so this is an extreme example and it’s not always like this, the mention can be a simple link to your blog or to a specific post. The point here is how to find this, right?

Tools

There are many tools you can use to track these mentions, feel free to share your favorite ones in the comment section of this post. Here a couple you can try:

Go to these sites and do a search based on your blog’s name or URL.

IceRocket

BlogPulse (From Nielsen)

Other tools you can use are Bloglines Search or Google’s Blog Search.

Get Alerts

All these services and most of them out there allow you to get the search results on RSS. You should subscribe and organize them on your RSS Reader. The point is to get alerts and be able to react as soon as possible, there is no point if you come back a month after the post was published.

Final Tought

The social web gives you the opportunity to engage in ways traditional media can’t but if you don’t pay attention, those opportunities are wasted.

One more thing, when you mention somebody or share a post from somebody else on your blog, make sure you do it properly so you give credit and the other end is aware of it.

Happy Listening!”

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