The Twitter team has been working overtime with fixes intended to resolve the growing pains associated with the microblogging service, with regular updates at the Twitter blog and the Twitter status blog.
I am a little surprised and disappointed that several core Twitter features have been disabled in the interim.
The loss of private messaging I can live without (for the short term), but what happens when you are handicapped in your ability to follow conversations?
Witness the page for Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project:
The pages show the twits originating from Jeremy, but the “With others” tab which you could click on and see the 2-way conversation is now missing.
If you want to track the conversation, you’d have to hit the “in reply to” hyperlink.
[At least that’s how I remember how I used to track conversations…]
So if you’d like to follow an active Twitter user, you’d be hitting the “in reply to” link pretty often and opening up a bunch of windows and study the timestamps and figure out the chronological sequences.
I may be wrong, but I thought the purpose of these technologies was to make things easier, rather than give me some weird sudoku-like puzzle to figure out what goes where?
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Having installed the latest version of the Flock social web browser (based on the Mozilla code, which Firefox is based from), I noticed that there’s an integrated Twitter module.
I had a great time presenting a session on social marketing and web 2.0 technologies for Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project today and it fired off a couple of thoughts on how Internet marketers can leverage their brand to enhance their business.
Especially if you’ve been traditionally focusing on PPC or Search Engine Optimization to generate leads and sales, these strategies can give you a couple more tools for your arsenal.
Social marketing is all about open communication and visibility. (transparency and honesty are key too).
If you don’t already have an online presence, look at how you want to position yourself.
At the heart of it, a Dell computer, an Apple iPod or an Asus Eee PC is just a bunch of circuit boards and electronic chips soldered together and encased in an aluminum or polycarbonate case. It’s marketing magic that imbues these objects with the emotional associations of style, ease-of-use, prestige, etc.
In his book, “All Marketers are Liars”, Seth Godin mentions how consumers are actually the ones lying to themselves. They imbue products and services with these larger-than-life characteristics and spending their income on “driving machines” and believe that a computer can help them “think different”.
If you’re an online marketer and you aren’t already picking up these tips to up your game, you could be missing out on the massive leverage these strategies provide.
Pickup artists like Neil Strauss AKA Style, Erik Von Markovik AKA Mystery talk about creating personas or social avatars. I don’t see this as very different from a brand that a company creates.
One question might be asked “So, how do I create my identity if I’m new to this?”
Answer: Create your identity based on what you want to be (your outcome) and strive towards it. An avatar is your desired outcome, you build it as a goal you want to achieve.
Having it consistent with your personal thoughts, values and attitudes will help you market via social media and web 2.0 with authenticity and brutal effectiveness. Projecting a picture of yourself as something you’re not is going to be a fruitless exercise down the road.
The pickup artists have put a practical application to Robert Cialdini’s concept of social proof – the idea of DHV’s or Demonstration of Higher Value. In Internet marketer speak, that’s becoming an authority site in your niche. (ok, I’m extending the concept further from its original position).
More importantly, social marketing still represents a pool of huge untapped potential – something like the Excalibur buried in a block of stone. The secret here is that anyone can be the “King Arthur” that pulls it out and unleashes its potential – it’s a matter of stepping up and taking action.
This clip with one of Mystery’s lieutenants, JDog, address the issue of creating avatars. Read between the lines and the same principles of focus, rather than “peacocking” will equally apply in your business too.
I have to thank Jeremy Palmer for helping introduce a new routine for me this week.
Because of the BlackInkProject, I’d been waking at 5am (later rolled back to 545am) to make it for his live affiliate training (3pm PDT is 6am in Singapore…)
If you’re already an affiliate marketing veteran, what you’ll take away from Jeremy’s lessons is not what he says on the surface, but also “what lies beneath”. Look beyond the surface and you’ll get an insight into how he strategizes his system, develops a process and applies that process with ruthless efficiency when approaching a new niche.
So if you’re on the forums asking “I want to start a shoe blog, I hear they make good money. How do I start?” you’re probably barking down the wrong track.
Instead, take a moment to map out your goals/outcomes, develop a plan of action and be prepared to change course along the way.
As someone who made it to the sophomore year as an EE/CS (electrical engineers, computer science) major before dropping out and making a minor switch to creative writing and psychology, I’d like to think that one thing I’ve carried over from my 2 years of engineering is a systems-based approach to building a business.
Which totally echoes what Scott Jangro mentioned during the recording of our Friday Podcast session.
If you haven’t read between the lines in the affiliate and internet marketing blogs out there, and go beyond the “make quick cash” ebooks you see being flouted and touted and pimped all over the place, you’ll see a trend towards building a business online. And it’s no “big shock” or suprise either.
If you look back historically at the first salesmen selling snake oil and other miracle cures, they were soon supplanted by guys who were the real deal.
Do you think the online world is going to play by different laws?
So just like the dotcom crash of 2000 wiped out the guys who had (more…)
It takes a lot to get me out of bed early in the morning, but Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project kicked off to a great start today.
Jeremy talked about his start in affiliate marketing and the niches he’s in (dating, web hosting, music downloads, VOIP, online marketing), as well as criteria for shortlisting and testing viable niches.
More importantly, he also talked about a number of niches he “failed” at and eventually dropped.
If you’re not already generating a 5-figure income from your affiliate marketing efforts, you ought to sign up for Jeremy’s 20 session, free (yes…it’s free) training at the Black Ink Project.
I’ll be presenting content later in the series, and as the program picks up steam, I know that more than a few Super Affiliates are going to come out of this program.
The first week of training kicked off at 3pm PDT and continues the rest of the week.
Check out the full schedule and register at: Black Ink Project (limited spaces available).
The call recordings may be available 24 hours after the initial session.
Also, find out more about Jeremy Palmer’s strategies from his appearance on a recent episode of the Friday Podcast.
Note: US and Canadian BlackInkProject members have a toll-free number to call in. I made a long distance call, but it’s great to find out that webinar provider WebEx (a Cisco company) is providing real-time audio stream too.
In the affiliate marketing industry, top affiliate Jeremy Palmer ranks as one of the nicest and most competent people.
