Let me give a nice example. A couple of months ago I created this niche blog about the Eee Reader. I was anticipating that Asus might release its latest gadget within the year and since the eeereader.net domain was still available I immediately grabbed it.

I’ve got a couple of post put up but never really bothered to post regularly on the blog. But when things started to heat up in the ebook market, I decided to do some posts covering the latest news.  That’s when I decided to add the Retweet button at the end of each of the post in my blog.

I decided to tweet some of my posts from the blog to Twitter. And guess what? some of the people who are following me actually Retweeted some of my Tweets although I didn’t ask them to. They did it voluntarily.

And what did those ReTweets do to my blog? I checked my Google AdSense account and noticed a spike in AdSense impression for that particular blog. In fact, its impression even surpassed the AdSense  impressions of my other older blogs.

For the past couple of days, the blog I’m referring to has consistently generated ample AdSense impressions. I just installed a stat plugin to find out how the blogs is doing in terms of  page views in relation to the number of times the posts are being ReTweeted.

Aside from ReTweet, you might also want to check out the Facebook Sharing widget which was recently rolled out by Facebook and see which of these two social media services will work wonders for your blogs.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

But of course, you should still promote your blog posts on both your Twitter account and Facebook updates and other social media/sharing sites to get people to read your blog posts. And if you’re confident that you have made a compelling blog posts, hopefully readers will ReTweet your posts using the “ReTweet button.

So here, we have some of the WordPress Plugins that lets you easily add the “ReTweet This” button to your blog. All these plugins are proven to work on the latest vesion of WordPress.TweetMeme Button – shows a live count of the number of times your webpage or blog post has been tweeted

Easy ReTweet - this is the plugin I’m using for my new blog. It let’s you add retweet or Tweet this buttons for your WordPress posts, together with the retweet count. You can activate this plugin automatically or manually if you want to do some customization to make the ReTweet button fit your blog’s overall design.

BigTweet Button - allows you blog readers to easily tweet about your posts without leaving your blog. It features three button sizes in blue theme that you can choose to implement on your blog. The Plugin uses Bit.ly for URL shortening.

Topsy Widgets – this plugin puts a button on your blog posts that shows how many times it has been retweeted. It also allows your visitors to retweet your posts easily. What’s good about this ReTweet plugin is that it can turn tweets into blog comments.

ReTweet.com button – this is the official button plugin of ReTweet.com. It features full admin options, hide buttons on home page, pages, posts etc, option to display the retweet button at top or bottom, and various button sizes.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

One of the newest marketing tools I’m using now is Twitter. Yes, the microblogging platform that’s taking the world by storm is now also used as a part of a web marketing campaign. And it’s really no surprise why it’s considered an effective marketing solution. With Twitter, your message is transmitted immediately to your followers, who are specifically targeted to be more responsive to your branding message. The explosive growth of Twitter also means you’re exposing more and more people to your message. I tell you, the moment you use Twitter as part of your web marketing strategy, you’ll never look back.

One of the best ways to take advantage of what Twitter can do to market your web site, blog, product or service is by employing an easy-to-use marketing tool that automates Twitter’s functions for you. One of the most powerful tools in the market today is Tweet Whistle, a powerful Twitter marketing solution that makes it easy for you to get more targeted followers and even automate your Twitter posts, among other features that, frankly, will make Twitter marketing so much easier. What’s more, it’s one of the most affordable solutions in the market. You can try out the Tweet Whistle app through a free trial download. Just visit tweetwhistle.com. I’m using Tweet Whistle right now and I’ve experienced first-hand how effective it is.

In fact, Tweet Whistle is so confident about its product that it’s holding a contest. The winner will get one licensed copy of Tweet Whistle and a $25 cash prize to be paid through PayPal. Joining is easy:
1. Follow @thetoolsmith on Twitter
2. Just tweet the message below:

Just enter to win $25.00 and a free copy of “Tweet Whistle” Just follow @thetoolsmith and Retweet http://tweetwhistle.com

It’s that simple and what you’ll win will be so useful for your marketing efforts.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Going, Going Gone

I am not active in the StubleUpon community at all but I do love stumbling from time to time as it’s a great place to find great articles, particularly on smaller sites which I’m unlikely to find during my usual browsing routine. However, recently I have found that results seem to get less and less accurate the more you stumble.

For example, the other day I was stumbling using the keyword Blogging, a popular keyword and one which should bring up a lot of results. I came across a few good articles but after about 10 stumbles or so I noticed that results were getting more and more unrelated to blogging. I started coming across some joke sites, some political news and some funny image sites. The results also started to get older. All in all results were more and more unrelevant with each stumble.

If I was searching for a strange keyword or perhaps 2 or 3 keywords then I could understand why results would get worse as there would be less pages tagged with my search term. However, Blogging is an incredibly popular term and one which I’m sure many pages get tagged with so I’m confused why results are getting poorer after 10+ stumbles.

I’ve read a lot of posts on the internet about the StumbleUpon algorithm, most of which are speculation and involve a rating applied to the initial stumbler and the number of thumbs up and thumbs down. However, I haven’t see anyone else talk about the inaccuracy of results after a lot of stumbles.

Has anyone else noticed this? I’m curious to know if other stumblers have seen this too

Written by Kevin Muldoon of Blogging Tips – Follow Kevin on Twitter.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Getting the most out of Twitter

In my opinion Twitters greatest strength is the ability to get help from friends in certain situations. Darren Rowse in particular has talked about the help he has had from followers but with over 9,000 followers it’s easy to see why he has this view. With just 55 followers I unfortunately cannot expect this level of feedback.

There are a few ways I could gain more Twitter Followers :

1. Update my Twitter account more often
2. Raise my profile as a webmaster/blogger so that more people want to follow me
3. Follow more people

The last point seems to be the quickest and easiest way to get more followers. By simply following a few hundred more people you can expect many of them will follow you in return. This is because many people think it’s rude not to return a follow. I went through my followers a few weeks ago and followed several of them and got 3 or 4 replies from them saying ‘Thanks for following me’. However, this is a route I am personally very reluctant to go down as the more people you follow, the more updates you are going to get which means that you might miss out some great links from the people you want to follow.

Of course, if your goal is just to have a lot of followers so that you can get help when you need it, following thousands of people in return will not concern you. Though one of the main reasons I use Twitter is to keep up to date with the latest internet and blogging news and the more people you are following the more the links to these stories will be pushed down to the archives. At the moment I am following 40 people and I am already thinking of unfollowing some people as they Tweet too much and rarely post anything which is relevant. 4 or 5 of these people account for about 60-70% of the updates I see in my account. So I can only imagine what it’s like for people who are following thousands of people.

Do we need a Fake Follow?

Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, wrote a post yesterday entitled ‘An Evolving Cultural Curiosity: We Need A Fake Follow‘ in which he suggests that perhaps sites like Twitter and FriendFeed need a fake follow option.

But there are a lot of people who for some reason are greatly offended when you don’t reciprocate a follow/subscribe on Twitter or FriendFeed. When this happens (and it happens a lot), you have a choice – deal with the fallout (”that guy is such a jerk”) or just friend the person and avoid the pain.

Here’s the problem, though. When you follow too many people the service just becomes unusable. On Twitter I follow just 466 people that I find interesting, but the content stream is far too much to consume. On Friendfeed the problem is even worse because it aggregates so much other content (Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, blogs, etc.).

In response, Evan Williams from Twitter has said they may “adopt different friend types to deal with the problem” and FriendFeed co-founder Paul Bucheit says they are releasing new features in the coming weeks that will “make it easier to separate the people who you really want to follow from the rest”.

I’m curious as to how this would work. I think a fake-follow option would be good as it means you don’t have to offend people who get annoyed by not following them back but what goes around comes around. You might dupe some people into believing you are following them with a fake-follow but no doubt some people will be duping you too so perhaps only 200 of your 400 followers are real. Which kind of makes the followers figure pointless in some respects.

However, by the sounds of it, Twitter and FriendFeed’s idea of separating friends into different groups is a more practical one and one which I hope they integrate into their service. This means when you follow someone their follower account increases by one but they don’t know what kind of friend you classify them ie. you could place them in a group which actively updates your account or a group where you only see the updates by manually checking that group.

Regardless, I think it’s good that Michael has raised this point and hopefully we will see it integrated in the next few months. It would be great if we lived in a world where people didn’t get annoyed when you didn’t follow in return but until that day, a fake-follow or something to that effect would be very welcome.

How choosy are you with the people you follow on Twitter? Do you always follow people who follow you or are you more picky with the updates you receive?

Written by Kevin Muldoon of Blogging Tips – Follow Kevin on Twitter.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Facebook also did something right by implementing an instant messaging service as well as the eventual profile redesign which will hopefully trim down the number of applications on people’s main profile page, one of my biggest complaints.

With Twitter having many huge issues, Facebook is looking like the brighter, more active community to be a part of. I hate to say it, but I don’t think the Twitter killer will be another Twitter-like service, but instead something stable and more captivating.

If you want to check out my Facebook profile, please head on over and add me. Make sure though that you write a custom message letting me know who you are and where you came from, or I will decline.

How many people have come back to Facebook after deciding to leave? Who among you are thinking of leaving Facebook? Let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

For me Twitter became indispensable in March 2008, when my usage skyrocketed (I started using a desktop client to read and write messages) – see image above. It is now an important part of my work and social life, as I carry on bite-sized conversations with thousands of people around the world throughout the day. It’s a huge marketing tool, and information tool. But it is also a social habit that’s hard to kick.

While I hate to agree with him, it really made me wonder if we become so dependent on services that no others will do. Twitter, like most online applications has many copycat competitors. Jaiku and Pownce quickly come to mind, and while I knew that neither seemed to have the power to attract a wide audience that Twitter has, I had hoped that Pownce would compete well against Twitter due to its advanced features.

I was wrong in thinking this would be the case, as even Pownce and Jaiku supporters jump on board the Twitter bandwagon, some telling themselves that Twitter is just their status update, and Pownce is their communication tool, isn’t that right Kevin Rose?

When I saw Kevin Rowse, one of the people responsible for Pownce, using Twitter more and more, I realized how powerful the brand had become. I think we can safely say that like Coke, Kleenex and others, Twitter has become synonymous with being “the” short update service.

I still think though, that some missteps could ruin Twitter, and I hope that Twitter, and other online services dependent on users adoption keep that in mind as they continue to move their businesses forward. Just remember, even search engine popularity has changed over the decades, so continue to be forward thinking, serve your user base, and take care of your users, or no matter how popular you think you are, they will leave you.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, check out www.twitter.com/davidcubed

This, to me, reinforces the fact that social media is a key component to a blogs success or failure as I was also getting many more advertisement requests on this site when my rankings were getting better and better, as advertisers no doubt assumed that they would continue to rise and as such they were getting an amazing deal.

I still believe there is great value in this site, its content, its archives, and its audience, but I have to admit that I am going to be gearing up for another social media push in hopes to getting this blog back on track with both Alexa and Technorati so that my rank on 45n5.com/top100 remains fairly high.

Was it smart or dumb of me to delete my Facebook account? I am not sure yet, but I know that it will allow me to reclaim the time I was spending on that site to use productively on other sites.

One thing of note about my Facebook account is that it was almost one half business related contacts, or contacts I have made through blogging. While I hate the idea of not being able to connect with them any longer, they were really just a placeholder on my friends list as I communicate with them through my blogs, e-mail and instant messaging software.

Have you thought about deleting your Facebook account? Do you get anything from your time on Facebook? Let me know, I am always interested, as my wife is still using it as her e-mail replacement.

I think this paragraph from the article sums it all up nicely:

Facebook now resembles the preverbal high school party to which one invites a few friends and ends up hosting the entire school and then being left with the cleanup the following morning. Gone is the neo modern facade and the clean interface, hijacked instead by a throng of applications which are nothing but glorified billboards waging a battle for eyeballs. Walls now resemble teenage bedrooms plastered with posters and littered with the remnants of countless fast food excursions. Not to mention the painstaking process of weeding through invitations to add all manner of useless applications.

I have continually found myself more and more frustrated with the continuing de-evolution of the Facebook profiles. I actually banned my wife from Facebook a few times, as she got a little obsessed with the site. She even went as far as deactivating her profile, though she only lasted a week before re-activating it. I almost get carpel tunnel just from scrolling down to the wall on her profile, as I pass the fun wall and super wall applications she has added.

It has gone beyond ridiculous. The whole data portability thing only matters to me if someone comes up with a better, more professional, grown up Facebook. That way I can leave that stupid site behind. As a quick side note, and thumbs up to Facebook, it was, at first, nice to interact with my High School friends once again.

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