I love Trip Advisor as a reviewer. I really like their detailed rating system, and I think it gives us a chance to dive deep into the nuances of our review. The overall system doesn't encourage the usual all-or-nothing rating system you tend to see on Google or Yelp.

Even though Google and Yelp offer 1-5 levels of review, most people stick to 5-star reviews if they liked the place or 1 if they didn't like it. Trip Advisor reviews seem more realistic.

I think Trip Advisor reviews are great. I specifically like their rewards system for reviewing places and experiences. Like Google Guides, they give the reviewer points and badges for completing certain milestones.

This is where I stand right now, but I haven't really updated it since the lockdowns started just at the end of 2019. If you're on Trip Advisor and would like to follow me, here's my profile at Trip Advisor.

Trip Advisor Badge Collection

Trip Advisor has a lot of badges available, it seems that they have put a little more thought and effort into them than Google has for their own, and I like that.

I have received the following ones:

These are the rest of the badges.

I'm missing a lot of these, but I'll get there and hopefully get them all. Some of them will be really easy to get. Some of them may be more difficult.

I have some interesting observations about the badge system at Trip Advisor. Some of the badges are based on other visitors to the site, like the readership badges, other ones are solely based on our own activity on our reviews, like the photographer badges. Also, if you notice, some of them have levels.

The level threshold for the badges that have one is indicated when you click on a badge. For example, the Resort Expert Level 1 requires three resort reviews. Most of the badges that have levels increase in level after 3 reviews.

Some other badges, like your "Passport", just include how many cities you've reviewed places in.

I guess my goal is to light all of them up and then just keep leveling up. It shouldn't be too hard.

The post Trip Advisor’s Badge System appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

BTW, did you know they have a desktop app as well? I haven't tried it yet, because the web UI is really good. You can do almost everything you can on mobile (unlike Instagram). You couldn't comment on videos before, now you can.

As much as everyone praises the "mobile-first" approach, it is undeniable that desktop/laptop traffic is still an enormous portion of the traffic on the Internet. TikTok is realizing that.

Here's something they just added that is really interesting. Scheduling. You can now, it seems upload videos and schedule them for future release.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

This is Awesome!

This is a game-changer and it shows the leadership or trailblazing actions that TikTok is taking to gain more and more market share.

While Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and other networks are getting pummeled by TikTok magnetism and worried about how to keep up, TikTok is here doing its thing, listening to what people want.

We've all been wanting scheduling features in Facebook, and Instagram, and even Twitter, but they won't do them it. I admit, some of Facebook has scheduling features now, kinda.

For the most part, FB, and IG and Twitter allow other companies like Hootsuite, or Later, to do the heavy lifting and then just control the access to the data and infrastructure. Whatever. That's their way. It sucks IMO, but it is what it is.

TikTok on the other hand, pretty much just says f*ck that! Here, we added scheduling. Go nuts, done and done!

Schedule Posts on TikTok

Here's what scheduling on TikTok looks like on a regular web browser:

After you accept a disclaimer saying that the videos have to be uploaded to their servers first, then you can just pick a date and time for the video to publish. Just as you'd want on your Facebook post for example.

Many people I have told about TikTok say "I don't have time" or I can't post to another network.

I can understand that sentiment and it's a legitimate response, but now that you can schedule posts on TikTok, does this change things for you? If you aren't using it already, does this make a difference for you to start using TikTok?

By the way, if you want, you can follow me over there as @notagrouch.

The post TikTok Adds Scheduling Future Posts Feature. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Twitter was innovative, it was cool, you could talk to people and it was interesting.

Unfortunately, all the things that made Twitter cool aren't part of the smallest of the tech giants. Where once they were bastions for freedom of speech promoting revolutions and allowing those without a voice to have a platform. They are now censors of expression and arbiters of "truth" more like the ministry of truth from 1984.

For a year or two, I've been trying to delete all my tweets. For purposes of branding and business, I can't just delete my Twitter account. I want to retain the name, so I didn't want to just delete the twitter account. I simply wanted to stop using it and delete everything I've posted on it.

I tried free services, but these couldn't really delete all tweets. I also tried this tutorial from Quincy Larson, but the problem with that article is that a crucial step required to implement it can't be done anymore. Twitter used to give you a "tweets.csv" file that contained all your tweets. Now they give you all your tweets in a javascript file, but the script in Quincy's tutorial doesn't work with that.

How to Delete All Your Tweets for $7.50

I finally decided to pay up and get it done. This is how I did deleted all my tweets. I tried deleting all my tweets for free, but that resulted in a lot of tail-chasing and procrastination. If you really want to delete all your tweets, for whatever reason, this is the best way to do it.

The app I used is Tweetdeleter.com

Step 1 - Request Your Data

Request your data archive from Twitter. This is under your settings, account, Twitter data.

Twitter should produce your archive in two to 48 hours and will notify you via email, this is a zip file that contains all your twitter data.

Step 2 - Sign up with Tweetdeleter

Is to sign up with Tweetdeleter. I used the monthly option and paid $7.50 for one month since I was only going to use it one time to delete all tweets, then I would cancel the service. If you are interested in deleting tweets regularly, then paying for a year in advance might make sense.

You can set Tweetdeleter to delete tweets older than certain days, or just to keep the last few, you can also delete tweets that fit some criteria if you want.

Step 3 - Download your Twitter Data

Download your Twitter archive and upload it to your Tweetdeeleter account. Depending on the size of your archive, this might take a few minutes. My archive was a little bit over 350mb and it took about 10 minutes to upload.

Step 4 - Upload Your Archive to Tweetdeleter

Tweetdeleter will then process the file and give you some options to select what tweets you want to delete. If you're like me, and you are going to delete all tweets, then options are pretty much irrelevant.

Step 5 - Delete All Tweets

Pick the "Delete All Tweets" option at the top of the dashboard, Tweetdeleter will confirm and after you click "Delete" your tweets will begin deleting. Wait 30 seconds up to a few minutes.

The entire 37160 tweets I had posted since 2007 were deleted in about 2 minutes. I then visited my Twitter profile and I had 0 tweets.

Step 6 - Cancel Membership

Optionally, if you just wanted to do this one time and don't want to get billed again, make sure you cancel your recurring membership to Tweetdeleter. I paid with Paypal so I had to go into my Paypal account to cancel the service.

Conclusion

Deleting your tweet history isn't very straight forward. Twitter doesn't want you to delete your tweets and doesn't really let you do it easily. You can delete 3200 recent tweets relatively easily, but if you want to delete your entire collection, you need to find a paid service to do it for you.

It was time to close the chapter on Twitter for my Notagrouch account, and this was the best step I could take towards that, I kept my account open, but now there is only a tweet notifying followers and visitors that I've left and where they can find me.

If you want to follow me, follow me on Instagram, TikTok or even Youtube.

The post How to Delete all your Tweets in 5 Easy Steps. Adios Twitter. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

TikTok has taken the world by storm, it started as the mobile app Musical.ly. Now it boasts billions of downloads and somewhere around 800 million monthly active users.

Recently TikTok seems to have added the ability to go beyond the mobile app and allow the users to upload videos directly from their computer or laptop. Using a normal browser, you can now upload videos to TikTok.

This is really useful if you're creating videos on a regular movie editor like Final Cut Pro, or Adobe Premiere, DaVinci or something else.

The only caveat is that you don't have access to all the same tools when you upload to TikTok through your desktop or laptop. Here's a short video on how to upload to TikTok from your computer.

Video: How To Upload To TikTok From Your Laptop or Desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw773GbfMv8

The post How to Upload to TikTok From Your Computer appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It's really hard to grow Instagram without using hashtags. It's possible, but unless you're a celebrity, or have all day to work on each post you make for Instagram you're going to need to use hashtags effectively.

I recently learned about this service that curates the best hashtags per topic and so far it seems to work really great. Let me show you.

Ramen Photo

This post, a single image. Using the hashtag suggestions did really well compared to previous posts. The thing to notice is how many impressions came from hashtags.

Impressions are just a small part of the battle to get noticed on Instagram. The next part is to get engagements. On Instagram, the best engagements are shares, bookmarks, comments, likes, and follows, more or less in that order.

Using the right hashtags helps you mostly with impressions, once you have impressions then you can fine-tune your captions, your photo composition, work on your theme and get better at marketing yourself in general.

Seafood Photo

The seafood photo also shows the impact the hashtags had on the reach. About one-half of the impressions came from hashtags.

Hashtags Work

Now, there are some people out there that consider hashtags "thirsty" but are any of those people paying your bills? Are they paying you for sponsored posts? Are they getting you new business? Are you paying THEM to give you advice?

No? So ignore them.

The Trick to Finding Good Hashtags?

Well, you can spend weeks and months looking at analytics and measuring how effective (or not) the hashtags you use are. In the end, this will be futile since you don't have a lot of data to use or compare besides your own account. It will be really hard to determine which Instagram hashtags perform the best.

Or you can use one of those apps in the app store that tell you the "popular Instagram hashtags." They even have Instagram hashtag generators, but I haven't found those to work really well.

What I used to help me with these posts is Juiced Social. Juiced Social makes amazing lists of curated hashtags that provide niche hashtag recipes.

Hashtag Recipes

So far I have bought a couple of hashtag lists, they're only $5.00 each. I purchased the Business Motivation one, and for the food posts, I'm using a combination of two lists, Asian Food Hashtags, and Foodie Hashtags. But they have tons of them for all kinds of topics. I'll probably pick up a couple more soon as I implement a new Instagram theme for 2020.

Some of the most popular categories are Beauty, Business Marketing, Cars, and other vehicles, Quotes and Inspiration, and of course Travel. They even have monthly free lists you can use to complement your posts.

I took the screenshots for these two posts about a week after I posted them. So the reach happened fast, maybe in the first 3 days. This is true for most posts, with or without hashtags.

But there is also something that hashtags do for your post. They keep it relevant. People search and browse hashtags, so if you pick the right hashtags, you'll continue to get traffic over a long period of time.

Sidenote on deleting hashtags.

There is some controversial advice floating around out there that suggests you should delete your hashtags after a week or a month of posting. The reasoning behind this goes in line with what I said earlier about hashtags being thirsty.

It's supposed to give viewers the impression that you received all that activity without hashtags. But I don't think this is true or good practice.

Here is what two Instagram experts have to say on the matter of deleting hashtags when I asked them.

Leave hashtags alone unless they've been banned or blocked. "...for niche tags, you can stay close to the top for weeks, months or longer." - Ciaran Blumenfeld

"Keep them on. They drive so much traffic. - Tanya Kara

One more post example.

This one was the most successful of the short test I've been doing with Juiced Social.

This one worked really well. The impressions are about the best I've gotten in a long while and the number of likes I got for those hashtags is pretty good too. Just shy of 100 likes, with a reach of over 1500 accounts 80% of which were not my followers. Now I just have to work on getting them to comment, like and follow.

Next time you find your Instagram hashtags not working, or just want to boost your posts a little bit without spending money on Instagram ads, give this a try. It could make all the difference.

The post Finding the Best Instagram Hashtags appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

We try to embody that message by meeting in person, over coffee or breakfast, sometimes brunch to talk shop. The first meetup took place at the Union Market Mission Viejo and we had a great turn out.

The latest one happened at A Market in Newport Beach and it was great. You should come out next time. Whether you're a realtor, an entrepreneur, an analyst looking to network and learn social networking.

Here's a short recap of some of the topics we covered.

Social Media Breakfast #2 Recap

The post Social Media Breakfast Recap appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

For me, the experience in Minds has been all over the place. It has been mostly positive, but not without its woes. I may talk about those in detail later, but for now, I'd like to keep this short.

At first, I was excited about it, then I became frustrated and left. This has happened twice or three times. But the promise of it keeps bringing me back to see if it has progressed. To see if the issues I found with it have been addressed.

The promise of protection for freedom of speech, uncensored interactions, true reach and just the philosophy of open source and everything that comes with it are very enticing for me, so that's why I keep coming back.

This should be important for you too, especially as more and more issues arise with the big social networks, like Facebook and Twitter. Only time will tell whether Minds continues to respect privacy and freedom.

But I'm back on Minds now. If you want to follow me over there, I'm under @OscarGonzalez.

I'm very happy and excited although a bit cautious with the network now. Cautious because when you're a blogger or social media professional, a digital marketer, like me, investing time into a site that isn't going to make it past the next six months can be a painful experience.

It sucks when you figure out how a site works, and you put a lot of time and effort into it and then they announce abruptly that they're going out of business like vid.me did.

Minds seems different now. The UI has been totally revamped, new features are active and have been rolled out and they are using a spiffy cryptocurrency system instead of fiat currency like when they started. That is not to say it is without problems, but it's better than before, much better.

I'm pretty confident to say that Minds is going to be around for a while. I even dare to say now that many of the issues that have kept me from spending more time on the site have been addressed, and it even seems like they're growing up a bit.

I recently reconnected with Bill Ottman, I congratulated him about the nice improvements on the site, and a few weeks later because he was in the Joe Rogan podcast.

With that kind of commitment, I'm willing to put some of the issues I disliked about the site aside and give it another chance.

In fact, I'm trying to help remove one of the main obstacles for me and other people like me to really embrace the site. This specific initiative is related to social media shares, but I'll leave it at that for now until I get something actually tangible to share.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find that they have an experimental section. Similar to how Snapchat lets you get early development builds to test out new features before they're rolled out to the general population. Or like how Gmail used to have a fun labs section in the early days.

This is one good reason to come and give Minds another try. Features like this show maturity in the software and the development of their roadmap, so that's extremely promising.

If you're interested in checking out minds, head on over to Minds.com and find me as OscarGonzalez. Talk to you soon!

ps. Don't forget about the 30 day One Funnel Challenge, starts in 4 days!

The post Minds.Com Is Growing Up. We’re Waiting for You appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Yes, really. Look here, and here.

And what is the number 1 search engine? Google, of course.

Google owns Youtube so you can say that Google really owns the #1 and #2 spots where people are searching.

One could argue that YouTube is not a search engine at all because it doesn't serve any documents outside of its own site, technically making the search function exclusively internal.

But going by the sheer number of searches going on in YouTube, and for this blog post, I'll consider Youtube a search engine.

This is why it makes sense for you to be on Youtube. Your business should be on Youtube and if you have a brand or a product, or even if you are your own brand, Youtube is something you should make part of your strategy.

There's Talent and There's Hustle.

Sometimes it seems that our efforts to create new engaging videos don't really pay off.

We find that despite all the effort planning, shooting, and editing a video, they turn out very low views and even lower engagement.

Well, here's what I have found. There are two things when it comes to any type of work, including being a content creator. One is talent, and the other is hustle.

This whole list is about hustle. It's about all the stuff you can do to beat the competition even if they are more talented than you.

When I've done all the heavy lifting part of a video, and I think I'm done. Just before my video is about to be published, I go through this list of stuff.

The work you put into this list can seem overwhelming, but take one step at a time and just check off each item as you go. After a few times, the process will become second nature.

This list is not comprehensive, but it's a collection of 11 best practices to follow just before and immediately after you publish a video.

Without further ado, here is the list I follow:

1 Add to a Playlist

Increase watch time by adding your video to a playlist of yours. Adding videos to related playlists gives you a chance of getting more views when people find one of your videos through a playlist.

Playlists show up in search results and sometimes videos in the playlist come up as results so when people play such a video, they're likely to see other videos in that playlist.

Bonus - make sure it's added to a "series playlist." Series playlists are special playlists, you can read more about them here.

Bonus 2 - make sure you create a good description for the playlist so that it helps with search results. You can even add short descriptions for each video which will help with search results as well.

2 Add an End Screen

When your video is over, help direct the viewer where you want to by linking to other videos or adding a subscribe button. You can add up to 4 items on your end screen, including any video, a recommended video for the viewer, a playlist, and the lastest upload.

End screens can be up to 20 seconds long. You can see how I do my end-screens on any of my videos.

Some YouTubers add a small video segment at the end of their video to talk about the end screens and actively direct the user to click on them, others like me, just ad a static slide for 10 - 20 seconds.

You can decide how to do it, or you can start with a static slide like me, and then later on make end video segments, up to you. But just use the end screens, they help.

This is an explanation of end screens, straight from the horse's mouth. And below is a good video by Youtube expert Darrel Eves, I recommend you check those two things out.

Darrel talks a little bit about annotations, the precursor to end screens. Then quickly gets into a tutorial on how to add end screens. Worth a few minutes of your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4dYiyCg6q8

3 Add Tags to Your Title

It's generally important to have at least 1 or 2 of your tags appear in your title to help with search optimization on those terms.

This sounds confusing, but it basically means that you should have 2 tags from your tag collection (found under your description) match with part of the title of your video.

I have a feeling that tags will eventually go away as artificial intelligence engines get better at recognizing visual and spoken content, but for the time being, tags help you organize and categorize your video so that more people can find it.

Tags can be added in their own section, use at least 2 of these tags as part of your title to reinforce the topics and type of searches your video will appear in.

4 Add More Tags

YouTube allows up to 500 characters when adding tags. Use as many as possible and keep tags relevant to your video.

#3 above and this can go in any order, but when it comes to tags, you can add up to 500 characters worth of tags. Use them wisely and if possible, use up all your characters to maximize the chance of your video being discovered.

TubeBuddy helps you keep track of how many characters you've used and also helps you pick the right tags to use in your video. Learn more about TubeBuddy here.

5 Add Info Cards

Add Info Cards in order to provide relevant external information to your video - a related video of yours or your website, etc.

Info cards are those little pop-up icons that come up during some Youtube videos, they create a clickable call to action for your viewers to get more information about a video.

Info cards can link out to other videos, playlists, or even your website. You can add up to 5 cards to any video, and they are time-stamped so they can come up at the exact time you pick.

Sunny Lenarduzzi has a great video tutorial geared towards influencers and entrepreneurs, I highly recommend you take a look, it's only 3 minutes.

6 Add Captions

Adding captions will not only help visually impaired users consume your content, but it can also boost your search rank!

There is some evidence to suggest that videos with accurate captions tend to do better in search results and may attract more engagement compared to their counterparts without captions.

I recently made a video about this where I explain that I've seen around 5-15% increase in average on videos with close captions versus those that don't have it or have the automatic Youtube generated close captions.

I recommend you add your own and don't rely just on the ones that Youtube creates.

Here's that video if you want to see how to create subtitles from scratch with Youtube.

7 Upload High-Resolution Thumbnail

Ensure that your thumbnail shows up crisp and clear on all devices by publishing a high-resolution version. It's important to make sure your thumbnail is eye-catching but also make sure it's high-resolution.

Sometimes you can make a thumbnail on a mobile device and it looks great in that screen, but when you make it larger it turns out it's blurry or looks like it's low quality.

Thumbnails are the first impression when people see your video in search results or in your page so put some effort into it and make sure it's of high quality.

You can use Canva, Photoshop, or other apps to help you create crisp and eye-catching thumbnails. TubeBuddy even has a built-in thumbnail generator you can use on the fly.

One thing to note is that you must have a verified Youtube account to be able to upload custom thumbnails. Here are more details about video thumbnails.

8 Turn on Monetization

This video doesn't have monetization turned on which means you're not earning any ad revenue from it.

If you are a Youtube partner, you should turn monetization on for your video before you publishit. This will help you generate revenue from your video and it should encourage Youtube to show your video more frequently since they will also make money from it.

In order to have monetization available for your channel, you must meet certain requirements. You can learn more about those requirements here.

9 Make Your Title Between 20 and 70 Characters

You generally want your video title to be long enough to be descriptive but not too long to where it becomes hard to read.

Just like tags, you have a limit on the number of characters you can use in your title, but the ideal size for a title is between 20 to 70 characters. This is long enough to be descriptive and eye-catching but not so long that it becomes a burden to read the title.

Technically, you can go longer than 70 characters, but this is the cutoff mark for the title when it shows up on search results so in most cases, the viewer doesn't see anything beyond the 70 characters until they click on the video to watch it.

10 Get a like on Facebook

YouTube isn't the only place you should be sharing your video - make sure you tell your connections on Facebook about it.

This one is easy, and it also serves as a reminder to share your video on Facebook.

Whether you share it on your Facebook business page, fan page or your personal profile, share it so that other people can see it and hopefully at least a few people will like the post on Facebook.

You can also share your video in a group, but the likes from groups may or may not be tracked. Always share the video to your personal profile AND a business page if you have one.

This helps with your visibility, SEO and social signals.

11 Pin a Comment

Take control of your comment section by "pinning" a comment that you choose to the top of the list (usually your own comment).

This is a recent trend and while I can't say exactly how important it is, it is very clear that you should do this for all your videos as a way to start up the conversation and encourage others to leave their own comments.

It used to be that you would put a lot of information in the description, but in most cases, people will not click on the "see more" link to reveal your entire description.

A comment, on the other hand, is visible right away and if it's the pinned comment, it will show at the top so you can add more information about the video, ask a question or provide additional links.

Many people will feel inclined to reply to a comment by the creator instead of leaving their own comment.

In conclusion

So this is a good list for you to follow, keep it on a spreadsheet, print it and stick it next to your desk. Whatever you need to do to keep this list handy, do it. If you follow these, you should see an increase in views and hopefully engagement as well.

You still have to strive to create informational, educational and entertaining content, but when you've done your best in that regard, follow this list and I think you'll see results.

The Tubebuddy extension I mentioned helps you accomplish and track all of these items for you, like item #3, with TubeBuddy, is a breeze.

If you want to look at that, it's free and available for all major browsers. Learn more about it here: https://tubebuddy.com/youtubehelp. And yes, if you were curious, I'm an affiliate for them. But I also use them for every single video I publish and I'm slowly working my way back through all my previous videos.

The post 11 Best Practices to Get More Views on Youtube Videos appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The reasons for adding subtitles to your video are many.

If your video is properly closed captioned, more people can watch it. Closed captions are used by people that can't listen to a video to be able to read or interpret the message from the video.

Youtube creates automatic closed captions, but they're not always accurate.

One more benefit for the closed captions is that you can describe sounds and activity that the automatic captions won't ever do.

You can even add an introduction text where you plug your company. I do this at the beginning of the introduction and I say something like "closed captioning by notagrouch.com".

I think it looks pro and it looks like the captions you see on movies and TV. You can see that in the video below if you have CC turned on.

I also decided to spend more time on my own captions because I noticed an increase in youtube views recently after I started following best practices recommended both by Youtube and other Youtube experts.

So I made a video on how to do it. This is when you want to do them from scratch. There are two other methods that are more suitable for making adjustments to existing transcripts.

I also have a feeling that closed captions can or may affect search engine rankings. It makes sense to me that they would, but I'm not sure yet. Here's that tutorial for now:

How To Create Subtitles or Closed Captions on Youtube

The post Youtube Tutorial. How to Create Close Captions for Your Videos appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I know I have changed my mind many times after having a reasonable discussion with others it's part of what I do; see #69 here.

But from my experience, most people stick to their guns just because they can't admit publicly that they could have been wrong or that they have learned everything. Or if I dare say it, they stick to their argument --no matter how flawed it may be-- because of identity politics.

Social media has allowed us and actively encourages us to build echo chambers that only support us and don't really challenge us.

But there are some of us that use social media to enhance our business so we need to use it. It is exhausting to deal with the bickering and the circular arguments.

So what can we do to fix Facebook?

Facebook isn't going to change anytime soon, amidst security breaches, corruption and violations of our data, they still remain the best social network as far as features and benefits.

I think they're seeing a bigger backlash now, but until a real viable social network comes along to dethrone Facebook, it's up to us to make it better.

This is what I did recently and it completely transformed my Facebook experience. It's not the first time I do this. I did it back in January around the same time as Affiliate Summit, but after a week or so I ran into problems with the extension so I went back to regular Facebook.

This time around, I think the extension has improved a lot and I'm not running into any problems so far. The extension I'm using is called Social Fixer. It's available for most major browsers, though it isn't available for mobile.

I talked about this in one of my videos recently.

Video: Fixing Facebook

How to fix Facebook

The first step is to install Social Fixer, you can get it here. It installs really easily, just find the link for your browser. It's available for Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. If you want to use it with MS Edge, you'll need to use Tampermonkey first.

After you install it, you'll need to open up a new tab for Facebook so the extension loads. You'll see a new icon in your Facebook interface on the top right corner. This accesses all the options for Social Fixer.

The main options I changed are as follows.

Change the order of the feed to be in chronological order

For the longest time, Facebook would show you the items on your feed in chronological order, but in recent years they changed that option to show you the top stories only.

Later on they gave us an option to pick one or the other, but eventually, they removed it.

Although you can still access the feed in chronological order by adding this to the end of the facebook.com address: "?sk=h_chr&sfx_switch=true"  without the quotes, Facebook no longer offers a link to change it.

Social Fixer can automatically load your feed in chronological order every time. When you do this, Facebook will give you a link to go back to the Top stories in case you want to see that for now.

It's a nice change to see all the stuff you've been missing.

With the change to a chronological order, you'll see a lot of stuff that you've been missing. Stuff from your friends and people you care about but somehow Facebook deemed wasn't important.

Setting the chronological order also lets you see all the junk you've been part of allowing you to clean it up.

This includes groups you joined and are no longer active in, friends that you accepted but aren't really your friends or have any connection whatsoever, and pages that you no longer want to follow.

Having the feed in chronological order reveals all these things so you can clean it up.

Add a filter list of words

This one is great, but also a double-edged sword.

I mentioned how social networks help and encourage echo chambers. If you're not careful, you could create a list of words that will encourage that echo chamber.

I suggest you add words that balance each other out but prevent posts that will distract you or create turmoil in your business.

If you want to discuss deep nuanced ideas, like politics, I suggest you check out a platform like kialo.com. Most of you won't because you actually like arguing and having your friends back you up and when you finally have the last word you'll feel good about "winning" but at the end of the day you would have wasted all that time arguing instead of focusing on income-generating activities.

Here is the list of words I added if you were curious or want a seed list:

Election
Hillary
Trump
the resistance
MAGA
midterm elections
Kavanaugh
Blasey Ford
Sponsored

Your list will probably be different, but please notice that I tried to balance mine and I encourage you to do the same.

There are dozens of options to help you improve the overall experience. Review the screenshot above and you'll notice some of the general options I have set.

Social fixer also can do some cool stuff to clean up Facebook even more. You can, for example, hide entire sections if you don't want to see them, like the stories section on the right-hand side.

You can even hide the whole sponsored post section on the right-hand side.

But the thing that has made Facebook fun again is that I can see the stuff I want to see instead of having Facebook decide for me.

I am seeing so many things I've been missing from my actual friends and those people I know in person.

I cannot recommend Social Fixer enough. So far it's amazing. It didn't use to work well with Chrome, but it seems like it is doing a great job now.

The post Social Fixer Helps Improve Your Facebook Experience appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I had a blast. Not only did I get to spend a few days with my own thoughts and without having to worry about kids' schedules, feedings, naps, bathtimes, etc., but I also ran into a bunch of friends I didn't expect to see at this event.

It's taken me several weeks to unpack and unload so much of what I learned, but I'm finally coming around to publishing some of the videos.

This post started as a post to just share my first 2 vlogs from Social Media Marketing World, but it ended up being a bit of a review. There are more videos, and more thoughts coming on the whole thing, but I wanted to get the 2 vlogs out for now and a few thoughts down. Stay tuned on Twitter or FB for the next posts about #SMMW18 and #SMMW19

Social Media Marketing World 2018

Social Media Marketing World, or as we call it on social media, #SMMW18 took place at the end of February and it was a terrific event.

Even though I have seen the event from previous years unfold through social media, I didn't really know what to expect. There is a stark contrast between this event and the affiliate marketing events I usually attend; namely Affiliate Summit.

I was apprehensive but still went in an open mind.

I was nervous but then realized that I am also a social media fan, advocate, practitioner, and strategist, even an evangelist so really, social media is as much my element as affiliate marketing. I just hadn't been to such a large social media-related event in the past.

The event was well organized. The number of sessions going on was outstanding and in fact, it is perhaps one of my not-so-positive feedback to the event head-honchos. It felt like too many sessions. Add to that, the interview series with industry leaders and I know many people felt like they couldn't make a good choice when picking a session.

If you have ever read any of my reviews, you know that I usually start off with the negative. I like to get that out of the way and then focus on the strengths.

Also as a matter of disclosure and fairness, like almost everything else for my blog, I received everything related to the event free of charge or in exchange for something like consulting, advice, or coverage. I am keenly aware of this whenever I bring up any points related to cost or price. I didn't pay for my accommodations, meals or attendance.

There are some more negative things about the event but I didn't want to focus too much on them.

I'll go through these quickly:

The food left a lot to be desired. I'm used to events in Las Vegas which usually include a proper hot meal for breakfast and lunch, catered usually, and as good as you would get if you went out for a normal meal at any regular restaurant. The food at #SMMW18 was your typical boxed lunch stuff. It wasn't bad, but not quite what I'd expect for the ticket price.

No alcohol. Similar to me being spoiled from Las Vegas events, I think the alcohol was lacking. Maybe it is an issue with permits and the city, or something like that, but if I know anything from running and attending social events is that alcohol makes everything better, people talk more, people are friendlier, etc. We're all grown-ups here, right?

The badge & wristband situation was hokey. Having a badge should be all that is required for any sort of access to any part of the event. For those of you that weren't there, they had us wear a badge and a wristband, and it was never really clear what the difference was between the two. The wristband was clunky and at least a few of us lost it, creating a little more hassle for us and staff. Color-coded badges and good training for all ushers and floor staff would have done the trick.

Cringy performances. This will likely get me some glares and stares at this point, but I'll take those just to get it off my chest. This is my first time at this event, but it felt a lot like a church in some cases. At one point the m.c. actually preached a little bit; ugh. The creative performances seemed out of place and weren't quite up to par for it to be a value-add for me. I can only look back at H3H3's let's get social roast and wonder has the Social Media Examiner staff not learned anything?

With that said, the event was a world-class event. I mean really the only negative points I make are because I have put on events before and helped others run, manage and promote events so I see some things that others may not.

From the perspective of a regular attendee, the event was amazing. The caliber of the speakers was unparalleled and this is when you look at your ticket price and you see my complaints about the food and stuff and realize they don't matter. The level of speakers attending and presenting alone should really make this event be worth $3000 or even $5000.

The coordination for all the sessions, the staff and moving 4000 attendees from one room to another without incident was --from my view-- executed flawlessly. The venue was the San Diego Convention center so it was meant for events like this. Walking from session to session or from the main areas to the sessions could take a few minutes but overall the venue was suitable for this event.

There are two Starbucks inside so there was always a way to get re-caffeinated. If you had the all-access pass to the event you could also get coffee most of the day by going to the food area for breakfast or lunch. The coffee seemed to stay fresh and full most of the time.

get early bird pricing to SMMW19 here

Social Media Marketing World videos

Registration & first day

Vlog - Day 1 Part 1 - Registration, coffee, sessions, lunch.

This is what went down on day 1. Overall it was a great day, at first, getting to the event was a little intimidating because it is held at the San Diego convention center, which if you know, it's huge. Luckily I found a couple of wonderful ladies that happened to be part of the Social Media Examiner's staff for the event.

They were happy to guide me to the registration section. From there I ran into friends all over the place, had lunch and attended a session. You can watch the vlog here:

Party at the USS Midway Museum

Vlog - Day 1 Part 2 - sessions, drinks, break, party.

The rest of the day went well, I hit up a couple more sessions and did some more networking. Had a couple drinks with a couple of people then headed back "home" to take a break before heading to the USS Midway for the opening night party.

Something you won't see in the video is that the vibe of the party was a bit more lively than the camera shows. It was hard to film it and do it right because of the low light. I did my best.

You'll also notice in this video, I highlight people's names on Twitter or Instagram. I should have done that for the first video as well but I didn't. Sorry for those of you that went unnamed in the first video. I'll add your names to the description of the video.

That's it for now. I have a lot more to show you and more to say about the event. Remember to follow me on Twitter to see what else I'm doing right now, or on Youtube so you get notified when the videos get posted first. Oh yeah and don't forget to get your tickets for SMMW19... now! Click here to get tickets.

The post Social Media Marketing World 2018 Videos & Commentary appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Today, Twitter is vastly different. Most people come to Twitter to absorb information about their favorite topics. The other majority is looking for information curated by the people they consider experts or knowledgeable about a specific topic.

The landscape of the Twitter world has changed dramatically due to technical changes and shifts in internet culture. That's not to say that you can't make personal connections and grow your business using Twitter.

One of the notable things that has changed for businesses is the fact that it's almost required for a business to have a Twitter account.

Having an account isn't enough though. It's like a muscle, you have to use it and exercise it if you want it to grow and give you results.

You, as a spokesperson for the business, must nurture and work on the account regularly. It's great to talk to your prospects, existing customers and anyone that might be friendly to you or your cause.

But if you have that covered, what else can you do to leverage Twitter?

If you want more Twitter traffic, share your content on Twitter

Sharing your own content on social media must be a part of your plan to grow your business and influence. This sentiment is shared by most of the top online business people and influencers. Even if they don't tell you that they're doing this, their actions usually reflect this.

But some of the helpful social media and online marketing experts, like Neil Patel, actually teach these techniques. Neil suggests that we share 10+ articles which go back to our content, each day.

He also talks about how to grow your audience on Twitter fast on this video:

But Twitter can be exhausting, after you talk to people, and respond to conversations pertinent to your interests and objectives, you may feel too tired or overwhelmed to share your own content. And didn't Neil say to share your posts 10 times each day IF you already have a lot of followers?

What if you don't have 200,000 followers or more like Neil does?

The actual number of times you should share your own articles each day may vary by a number of factors, like how many articles you have and how many followers you have.

If you have a few hundred followers, you may annoy them really fast if you share 10 or more articles about your own stuff every day; this could hinder your growth and hurt existing or budding relationships.

But you can determine the right number of articles for yourself by experimenting. Maybe you share 10 articles total, four that are yours, and six about the industry by other influencers or media outlets. Maybe you can switch that ratio.

Play with those numbers, but remember that if you want more Twitter traffic, share more stuff on Twitter. BTW, if you agree with that by now, do me a favor and hit the following Tweetable quote just by clicking on it.

If you are skeptical or hesitant to share a lot of your own stuff, I totally understand, in fact, I had a question about sharing other articles instead of mine and how I should split that ratio. I didn't expect it, but Neil actually answered my question right away:

By the way, my traffic did go up, significantly.

But even if you could magically determine the exact number of times you should share your own content, the problem remains the same for you. If you don't schedule all these articles at once, you have to consciously share the articles every day at random times throughout the day.

This is exhausting, and time-consuming. Add to that the fact that you are also trying to respond to people on Twitter or initiate conversations, and run a business, you may feel like giving up quickly.

I get it, it's a lot of work.

But technology and tools are here to make our lives easier, don't overcomplicate things.

Use the right techniques and tools, as Neil suggests and as I show you in the video below, you can schedule all your own content to be shared in advance, on a set schedule. You can set this up once a week, or once a month and schedule all of your content.

On a future blog post, I'll show you how to weave your own content with niche content by other influencers in your industry so that you can keep a healthy and interesting balance of content. Make sure you subscribe, or follow me so you don't miss it if you want to see that.

But here's the video I made explaining how to use Buffer's power scheduler feature to accomplish what we've been talking about.

This is one of the strategies that has helped me triple my Twitter followers. By the way, if you aren't following me, you can right here: @Notagrouch.

TL;DR

In conclusion, you should have a Twitter account to help you grow your business. One of the strategies to grow on Twitter and get more traffic from Twitter to feed your business is to share relevant content that you've created on top of the regular, one-to-one interactions with your followers.

The easiest way to do this is to schedule all your own content in advance using a tool like Buffer coupled with the technique I demonstrated in the video.

I'm in the draft mode for another post that will simplify this process even further, and will make you a Twitter powerhouse without breaking the bank. Make sure you stick around or subscribe to my list to get notified when that comes out. Of course, you can also get notified if you follow me on Twitter.

Have you tried this before? Are you hesitant? I love teaching and sharing my expertise, but I also want to hear back from you about this and would love to know if you've done this, or not. If yes, what kind of results have you seen and if you haven't done this, why not?

The post How To Schedule Your Content on Twitter Once a Month appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But I see a resurge on Twitter and I see some good things that are going on. But I'm also deeply concerned about its apparent censorship and favoritism displayed over the past year and more so in the past few weeks.

If you haven't kept up with these developments, apparently, Twitter has been revoking the verified status from many accounts. It appears that Twitter is reviewing its verification program and will probably be removing the verification status from many more accounts.

It seems that some accounts claim that they've been unfairly targeted and singled out for suspensions and even permanent bans as a result of this "review", because of opposing viewpoints or what they call "wrong-think" like in  George Orwell's 1984 novel.

Twitter never comments on specific cases, but usually points questions and requests for comments to their Terms of Service document which like most T.O.S. documents is vague and even ambiguous; this allows for conspiracy theories, and alternate possibilities to be considered plausible by some.

Many argue, in contrast, that other accounts that are more in line with Twitter's political bias are allowed to remain active and verified despite exhibiting similar behavior as that displayed by the accounts that have been reprimanded arguably because of holding the wrong set of ideas or opinion.

You can't really change any of that... but this is what you can do.

And at the end of the day, you can't do much about Twitter's decisions anyway. But you know what you can do, is be a good person, be a decent individual and stop doing these three things on Twitter.

Trust me, they make you look like an amateur and it's time somebody tells it to you straight. I'm going to make this blog post mandatory reading for all my would-be customers and existing customers.

So without further ado, stop doing these things that make you a jerk on Twitter:

#1 Sending Automatic DMs

This is one of the worse things to have ever been turned into a thing on Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter, you surely have seen my top-most pinned tweet.

I've had it on for most of the year and it gets a good reaction.

https://twitter.com/notagrouch/status/828005553519472640

Nobody cares about your life's story in your auto dm. Nobody clicks on the links you send in there. Essentially, if you use Auto DMs when someone follows you, you're a jerk. You're forcing us to look at some crappy message and usually, you haven't even taken the time to  look at our account let alone follow us for a while so we can actually get to know each other.

I'll take that back. I'm sorry, I give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you didn't know prior to reading this blog post. Ok, but now you know so if you're still using Auto DMs, now, you're a jerk. Ok, I'll grant you a grace period, you can take a few minutes and then go turn off those automatic DMs.

Sending auto dms on Twitter is like throwing garbage out the window as you drive down the street, or like that crappy junk mail you still get delivered to your home address. Do the senders don't know that those pieces of mail survive only the walk to the nearest trash bin?

In Twitter, it's digital littering, you're doing nothing but creating digital garbage.

Please, don't. Just don't.

If you don't know how you're sending automatic direct messages because you set them up a long time ago and don't remember how, just click here to go to your Twitter apps permission page and click on "revoke access" next to all the apps listed there that you don't recognize.

This will reset your Twitter account's permissions and prevent 3rd party apps from sending those automatic junk messages.

#2 Sending Thank you for nothing messages.

Yes, it is absolutely true that you should acknowledge your new followers and engage with them. You should also engage with your existing followers and build connections with them. This is the reason we call Twitter a social network.

But don't confuse digital garbage for gratitude.

When it comes to Twitter, stop the automatic @ mentions messages with generic, repetitive and boring messages. Just like auto DMs, they're digital garbage.

If auto DMs are like mailbox flyers that are sent to you via postal service, then thanks-for-nothing tweets are the maybe-more-annoying door and car flyers you find after you come home or back to your car in the parking lot. More garbage and you're forced to look at it. And if you're sending these automatically, yep, you're a jerk.

These noise maker tweets sound a bit like this:

Thanks to my top #twitterfam followers (or some hashtag that sounds like a community exists): @mention1 @mention2 @mention3 @mention4 #famlov https://somefreejunk.net.

You don't need to thank everyone that follows you as if they just did you a favor. That's what people do on Twitter they follow each other. Instead, take it a step further and learn something about the person and comment on that. "Thank you for following me" messages are so 2008, and digital junk.

Generally, Twitter users fall prey to become these apps' advertising parrot-heads and use them with the promise of gaining a following or getting more "social mentions" which can be valued by some social influence measuring tools --also useless, but I digress.

At the end of the day, these tools primary purpose seems to be to generate digital garbage.

Instead, spend 15 - 20 minutes each day doing what I do to remain personal, and engaged with people on Twitter. It makes Twitter relevant again, believe it or not, there is a growing active user base on Twitter.

I explain how I engage with new users next.

What should you do instead?

From personal experience, thanks to Rewst.com and a dedicated 15 to 30-minute planned daily activity on Twitter, I've been averaging about 40 new followers each day. Thank you and welcome, all of you!

But to show gratitude, I take the time to check out each new follower and either like a few of their latest interesting tweets or maybe I'll follow them back. By the way, you don't have to use Rewst.com, it just makes things easier.

Another thing I do to show appreciation and acknowledgment to new followers is to retweet one or two of their most recent interesting tweets. I use Buffer to spread the tweets over a few hours or a few days.

Even doing an @ mention responding to a specific tweet they posted recently, or a compliment or positive feedback about their profile may go a long way.

These actions show you are there, and you're active and not just a twitter-bot pushing a message out. Taking the time to acknowledge your new followers shows gratitude.

Seriously, the other automatic, canned junk is bad. Forget it. Be real, be genuine and be there, even if it's just a couple times each day. Automatic "thank you @mentions" Just like I advise you for Twitter auto DMs... Just don't.

#3 Tweet Only your products

I'm a big proponent of automation. But you should work on intelligent automation. Once you get a work-flow going where you can read and share interesting articles on Twitter easily and timely, you can start sharing content that your followers may be interested in without any additional effort.

This video shows you how you can schedule all your tweets easily.

You can use something like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule tons of tweets in advance. But just be careful with this convenience.

Don't fall for the temptation to tween only for your products or services. You should have a mix of content.

How much is too much self-promotion?

Advice tends to suggest that we should be following a rough 80/20 split where you share industry news, relevant events information, quotes by captains of industry, interesting reports, case studies and news for about 80 percent of the time, and you share your own content the remaining 20 percent of the time.

If you are on Twitter and spend 15 to 30 minutes each day tweeting and engaging, then you'll find that you can be tweeting around 20 times organically.

Add to that count, 10 or so tweets you can pre-schedule as you read the type of content I suggest you share above. You could easily be tweeting anywhere from 30 - 40 tweets each day effortlessly. And that still doesn't count your own content.

Some people claim that if you were to just tweet your own content, you would lose followers and they'd feel like enough is enough.

But, I think if you're tweeting 40 or more times each day like I describe above, it's a fair ratio if you want to insert your own tweets 10 times a day. Mix them around in Buffer and continue to engage.

If you're trying to keep track of growth, you can also use Rewst.com to keep track of your growth. You could also tabulate the data yourself using Google Sheets, and I think Twittercounter.com will also help you track following and followers.

The big asterisk disclaimer on there is that my opinion is you should be engaging and sharing other content too to balance out your own content and to understand what others are sharing around your own topics of interest.

This means you could schedule around 8 to 10 tweets every day to your top 100 blog posts and go through them every 10 days or so. This will help you get a good amount of exposure and keep your followers looking at your content.

Neil Patel suggests you share at least 10 of your articles each day and look at the results based on the data --see video below: How to Get More Twitter Traffic (fast).

I tend to follow his advice and I usually share about 8 or 10 tweets of my own content and the rest are curated tweets.

I follow a ratio of roughly 50/50, and I think as long as the content is interesting, useful and valuable, even following Neil Patel's advice and only sharing 10 articles for your own blog may be fine.

After all if your own blog post isn't worth sharing, why did you write it at all right? And if it's worth sharing, why not share it?

Conclusion

These three things you need to stop doing on Twitter may seem a bit like rants, but based on my personal experience and in that experience of most of my clients, these are some of the biggest things that annoy other Twitter users and generally just contributes to a bad overall experience.

I'm not a big fan of telling you how to use any of the social networks. You should do what works for you. But if you insist on doing these things I listed, you have to wonder if annoying a large part of potential new followers is something that works for you.

Full automated Twitter accounts exist, and some of them have tons of followers, but they tend to be single-purpose announcement type of accounts. You can assume that all the unsolicited advice I provided here is meant for accounts that represent a person or a brand and want to actively grow and generate more engagement and traffic to their blogs.

The post 3 Things You’re Doing on Twitter That Make You a Jerk appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It has evolved quite a bit since its early days, and I recently started using it again.

Using a combination of tags in Pocket, IFTTT and Buffer, I can maximize my time and share the most relevant content I come across. I'll elaborate on this later if you'd like.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that GetPocket has a partnership with Samsung, it applies to Samsung Galaxy devices. If you have a Samsung Galaxy 6, Note5, and maybe newer, you can get 6 months of Premium service from Pocket.

The post 6 Months of Pocket for Free with Your Samsung Device appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Minds recently crowdfunded a million bucks, Gab.ai is fighting Google. Voat wants a piece of Reddit. And I could go on and on with the rest of new social networks that are competing for our mindshare.

So today, I would like to introduce you to Vidme.

What is Vidme?

Vidme is a new-ish video sharing platform. Some say Vidme is a mix between Youtube and Reddit, some call it the Imgur of video. But I see it as a video sharing platform, one of few that seems to have the basics nailed down and is gaining some traction.

Vidme describes themselves as a platform with one mission: To build the world's most creator-friendly video community. People are talking about it, and some of the features make it attractive to new and existing content creators.

Vidme has raised a little over 9 million dollars since 2015, it appears that they started with a seed of 3.2 million. Later on, they raised another 3.2 and just recently they raised an additional 6 million dollars.

I know there are other platforms that have been around for a long time that have challenged Youtube's dominance in video; and I intend to talk about those as well in a future blog post but for now, I wanted to cover Vidme and tell you about my own experience with it so far.

What's so special about Vidme?

Vidme has some interesting features that are intended to help content creators.

The strongest features attracting creators to the platform are the monetization options. While Youtube takes roughly 50% of the earnings from ads and the other part goes to the creator, Vidme has two main ways to generate revenue, and the lion's share of the revenue goes to the creator.

One such feature is paid subscriptions, the other one is tipping. They also have an ad revenue share program in beta right now, similar to Youtube's but with a 70% cut going to the content creator.

The platform used to be ad-free, but with the rollout of ad revenue sharing system, it seems that the ad-free experience is going away.

I don't mind ads except for the fact that about half the times that an ad was about to play, I was served just a black screen for a few seconds then the video would just start playing. Hopefully, it's just a glitch.

Show me the money!

Subscriptions start at $1.00 and work on a monthly basis; a subscriber can choose to pay a dollar or more each month to benefit the video creator.

Tipping works on a per video basis and the viewer decides how much to tip. Both of these options incentivize the creators to keep creating top-notch, relevant content.

Vidme takes a 10% cut of the revenue from those two options. This percentage split alone is a great incentive to join the site.

The only problem is that Vidme doesn't have the traffic that would allow creators to make a significant amount of money, yet. Hopefully, it grows more in 2017 and truly blooms in 2018.

There are some creators that have joined in from Youtube and have quickly received hundreds of subscriptions. But many of these are people that have over a million followers on other platforms already so many people are just following them.

Even so, Vidme is still fresh, and small allowing people like you and me to build a following there with little competition.

Vidme is also bouncing around the idea of having a merchandising system built in. No word on whether it will actually happen or when.

The idea of a merch store builtin to the system is innovative, but to me, it seems like out of the scope for a site like this, and I don't have a whole lot of faith in it. But it could work.

They have a sense of humor

Recently with the backlash that Youtube has been receiving, Vidme took an opportunity to take a jab at it with a promotional video. See below.

https://vid.me/KEnH

That's alright in my book. They capitalized on an opportunity and at least seem to be paying attention to what's going on over at Youtube. Now if we could just get a proper responsive embed for WordPress, that would be awesome.

So how big is Vidme?

When I emailed Vidme to get some current stats, they reported to me that they have about 25 million unique visitors "touching the product." I found that wording a bit interesting, but I'm guessing that it's just what we know as unique visitors. I was not able to find a number of creators or active creators, but if 25 million unique visits per month is accurate, then that's pretty damn respectable for a 3-year-old website.

I do have to wonder though, this same number has been reported for almost a year now. Are they being coy about their numbers or has their growth plateaued since December of last year? I'm not sure.

There's potential there, even if it's not without controversy.

I know there are lots of haters out there taking cheap shots at Vidme. I've watched the videos and read some articles.

But having the experience I have with startups, marketing, and product development, I think they are not giving the platform a fair shot. From what I can see, the "issues" some people like Eli the computer guy are complaining about are growing pains of a fast-growing company.

Most of the complaints seem like whiny rants that lack business insight. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. It seems that Vidme has been implementing changes as it receives feedback. They hosted an AMA on Reddit about 7 months ago where people got a chance to ask questions and give feedback. I think it's time they do another one.

Alexa reports Vidme to be in the top 2000 sites in the U.S. and it's climbing fast. It seems like it's about to cross that same mark globally. Their DA is a respectable 67.

It'll be a challenge to get under 1000, and even more so to get into the top 100. In contrast, Youtube is number 2 while Vimeo is at 94.

But I challenge any startup to get to 25Million unique visitors per month while hosting and serving video; arguably the toughest type of content to host and manage.

Why should you care about Vidme?

You should take a look at Vidme, create an account and use it for a couple of reasons.

They're a new company and new companies need support. Small companies need patronization from users because this is what keeps them viable, and in this specific case, it isn't good to have one single site dominate a total space as Youtube does.

When a company like Youtube becomes as big as it is, they start shaping culture, they start shaping thought, they become an entity that can control the media. They shape language, just like you "Google" stuff, people are "youtubers" and if you need to fix your broken washing machine, you'll "youtube" a video about it.

Youtube has fueled entire economic systems and with one change in policy, they can sweep it all away and drive people to lose a significant amount of revenue even if such outcome is unintentional, that's not a good thing.

It is especially disconcerting when you consider the type of issues Youtube is facing. Censorship, demonetization, and changes to the partner program status, are amongst the most notable problems bubbling up over there.

At the very least, you should try Vidme so it gets a chance to play in the big leagues. Maybe they'll fail, maybe they will be worse than Youtube. But if they don't get enough traction to prove themselves or hang themselves, we'll just never know what could have been.

I have faith that they can make it.

I think the timing is right, the product is good enough. That's not to say that there aren't some issues and needs for improvement, but that takes time and I think they're doing a good job at communicating with the users and working on improvements and trying new things.

If those reasons don't appeal to you, maybe I can appeal to your selfish nature and tell you that the site is young and open. It's not crowded yet.

From a practical perspective, it seems like it would be easy to have videos noticed and featured if you produce good content. Vidme is like an unexplored world waiting to be settled. A place where you can carve a nice little niche for yourself.

If you aren't a huge Youtuber already, it's refreshing to see that Vidme has very little competition within the site and thus you may be able to make a good amount of money in comparison to what Youtube has to offer.

And who doesn't like money? If you are already on Youtube, you can easily import your videos or just upload them to Vidme simultaneously. It would only take you a minute to fill in the title and description. Scheduling your videos in advance is available so that makes things easier.

Where can you find out more?

First, don't forget to follow me on Vidme. You'll find me as Notagrouch. If I haven't made it obvious yet, the site is at http://vid.me. Their own channel is here.

I'll be covering stuff about Vidme like I do for Youtube and other social networks here on my blog under the Vidme tag. And if you want to stay current with up to the minute news and discussions about it, the best place I found was the Vidme Reddit here.

Conclusion, TL;DR.

Vidme is a newish video sharing platform with some innovative features built in. Their goal is to help content creators by providing monetization features built directly into the platform. The site is growing and it has a little over 9 million dollars of funding. It's not crowded so it may be easy to carve a little niche and build an audience there as the site grows.

I'll write a little bit about using the site in a future blog post, but for the time being, you can find me there under Notagrouch. While I'm not leaving Youtube anytime soon, please join the site and follow me there.

1. Vidme Launches Paid Subscription Option To Diversify Creator Revenue Streams - Tubefilter, Vidme Launches Paid Subscription Option To Diversify Creator Revenue Streams, http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/05/11/vidme-paid-subscription-feature-diversify-revenue/
2. Vidme - Timeline | crunchbase, Vidme, https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bit-kitchen/timeline#/timeline/index

The post Introduction to Vidme and Why You Should Check It Out appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But how do you know the person behind that profile is real? If you don't have any connections with mutual friends, or if you don't recognize the person from a previous place of employment, education or even a recent event, chances are the profile trying to befriend you is a scammer.

If you're not very active on Facebook or social media then this may not be obvious, but let me tell you that there are tons of people out there looking to scam you. Maybe they want your money, or your connections or they are simply using you as a pawn to a larger more nefarious goal. Stay alert, and be cautious when new people approach you and don't seem to have a clear purpose or intention.

Don't get me wrong, everybody is looking for something. Most people just like to add you as a friend to truly connect with you. But some of them want to use you, some want to abuse you. I'm here to help you spot the ones that want to abuse you, to take advantage of your good nature.

Video: How to spot a fake profile scammer on facebook

NEVER click on a link you didn't ask for or were not expecting until you are absolutely certain that the link is harmless. Better yet, just don't click on it.

Some Telltale Signs They Are A Fake Account

• The user tries to make chit-chat conversation, often repeats it all over every time they make contact. There is no purpose to the conversation.
• The user has only a small amount of personal pictures or none at all. They may have a profile photo, but since they aren't real, they don't have other photos with friends, family, etc.
• They have very few posts. They just put a few things up to appear legitimate.
• They claim to work for high-visibility trustworthy school or work at a very prominent company or institution, i.e. Harvard, Yale, Oxford, or they work at a governmental institution. It's almost impossible to verify this unless you run an employment background check.

This is a video I made to show you how to spot a scammer on Facebook. It works about 75% to 80% of the time based on my personal experience.

In conclusion

Spotting fake profiles on Facebook can be pretty easy and with time, you'll be able to guess which ones are real and which ones are fake even without doing the steps I outlined in the video. It just takes practice. The method I describe just confirms your suspicions, and it takes just a couple minutes to complete and it's totally free, just use the Google image search.

A tip I didn't mention in the video if the image you search for doesn't turn up any results, you may also want to "reverse" it. You can do this with almost any photo editing software, just flip the image horizontally. Sometimes scammers will do this to throw off the image search in Google.

You should also know that it's perfectly possible for a scammer to have a legitimate profile. These type of scammers are a totally different kind and this video will probably not help you with that. When I said that this works 75 to 80 percent of the time, that's because sometimes scammers don't use photos from other people so the image search will not work in those cases.

The post How to Spot Fake Profiles and Scammers on Facebook appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But Youtube has some flaws, and one of those is the subscription system. If you use Youtube on a regular basis, you know that most channels encourage you to subscribe to them so you can stay up to date with their videos.

Obviously, after a while, you may end up being subscribed to hundreds or even thousands of Youtube channels.  What happens then is that Youtube can't notify you of all the updates. It wouldn't be practical.

Youtube came up with a solution for this, and they introduced the "subscription bell," a little icon that is available next to the subscription button on each channel. This bell icon lets you tell YouTube that you want "all notifications" from this channel. You can think of it as a priority status for that subscription compared to the other subscriptions.

But this doesn't solve the problem of too many notifications. You may have a thousand subscriptions and clicked the bell on 300 of those to receive all their alerts. But if those 300 channels are very active, then this is not a solution either.

I got sick of this notification mayhem and decided to unsubscribe from all Youtube channels so I could start from a blank slate. I went to the Youtube settings to look for a way to unsubscribe from all channels. No luck! Youtube wouldn't want me to unsubscribe from all channels because it would go against their goal to keep me on their site for a longer period of time.

So I went to use one of my favorite tools to make an unsubscribe script for Youtube. This tool is called iMacros, it's free. Even though it works with Firefox or Chrome, I think it works much better with Firefox, so that's what I used.

The following video shows you how it works and some of the basics. After the video, there are a few notes and also a download option for the script so you can just start using it yourself right away.

How to unsubscribe from all youtube channels, notes.

You need to install iMacros as an extension for Firefox.

If you want to subscribe to some channels after you have unsubscribed from all, I recommend that you back up your subscriptions first. You'll find the backup option on the bottom right of your Subscription management page. This option will let you download an OPML file which you can read with an RSS reader like Feedly.

Use this unsubscribe method at your own risk! Youtube doesn't have an interest in making it easy to mass-unsubscribe from all channels; they have an interest in selling advertising. One of their goals is to keep you on the site as long as possible, and they accomplish this by trying to show you content you would be interested in based on your previous watch history and subscriptions.

Using a script to unsubscribe is probably not something Youtube would endorse or encourage so use it your own risk. It's for this reason that I deliberately made the script with lots of pauses and time delays. The script is intended to be convenient, not to be fast.

If you are pushing the boundaries and Youtube decides to prevent you from unsubscribing quickly, you'll see a screen like this when running the script:

All you have to do at that point is wait a minute or two and then start the script again.

You can run the script manually, and it will unsubscribe you from 25 channels. Just use the "Play" button.

To run the script mostly automatically you should use the "Play (Loop)" option and specify the "Max" number of loops to run through. I ran the script ten times at a time, and this made it so that I unsubscribed from about 250 channels at a time. See screenshot below:

You'll notice that the script has a screenshot command, this is to take a screenshot of your subscriptions before it unsubscribes you from the first 25 listed on that page. If you don't want to keep screenshots, you can just delete that entire line. Screenshots are saved to the designated "Downloads" folder for iMacros.

If you want to remove the time delays (not recommended), you can delete the lines that say this:

SET !VAR1 EVAL("var randomNumber=Math.floor(Math.random()*4 + 2); randomNumber;")
WAIT SECONDS={{!VAR1}}

I recommend if you're going to "loop" the script to do a few hundred unsubscriptions at a time, you leave the last time delay so that there's a pause each time that the loop starts over. This delay may prevent Youtube from flagging your account or limiting you and showing you the 504 error I described above.

I was able to run the script on ten loops, and it only gave me the 504 error twice, depending on your Youtube usage and other factors you may not see it at all or you may see it more frequently. If you see the error every time it loops, you should log out of Youtube, clear your cache and log back in.

For more documentation and information on iMacros, you may want to take a look at the extensive documentation they offer in their Wiki here.

The script is here. Download it to your computer, put it into one of the iMacro folders, then play it through Firefox using the iMacro commands.

The script is herehttps://notagrouch.com/wp-content/uploads/youtube-unsubscribe.zip. Download it to your computer, put it into one of the iMacro folders, then play it through Firefox using the iMacro commands.

The post How To Reset Your Youtube Subscriptions appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The InstaWealth Growth System is part of the Wolfmillionaire offering, and as a matter of disclosure, I did not get paid or compensated to do this review in any way. As with all my reviews, these are my thoughts and opinions on this product. You can find the course at Wolfmillionaire.com

The first chapter didn't do a whole lot for me. I've been using Instagram for a while, and I know the ins and outs of the app, settings and all that stuff.

There were a few tips I picked up along the way but nothing earth-shattering yet. You may find that this is the case for you if you're also experienced with Instagram already. However, this is a comprehensive course so it makes sense that Chapter 1 would be a complete overview of all the basics of setting up your Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BS37gSSheLJ/

Based on this approach, if you're new to Instagram or are ready to dive in seriously, I highly recommend you go through this and take notes.

If you're completely new to Instagram, I would suggest you complete all 12 modules before you do anything on Instagram because some of the modules later in the chapter connect back to some of the first modules.

If you have had an account for a while and have been active, then you should go through Chapter 1 and fill in the gaps as you go to make sure your profile is all tidy and ready for the next sections.

Below are my comments from each module for Chapter 1

Chapter 1 has 12 modules.

Chapter 1 Intro video

Basics, intro, setting up the expectations for the course and quick overview. The introduction covers all the basic stuff from the get-go; this is ideal for anybody that is totally brand new to Instagram or someone that might want to give their profile a "once over" to make sure everything is tidy and ready for growth.

Chapter 1 - module 1

This section covers the differences between the two mobile operating systems: iOS and Android. Good tips that will help power users decide between the two platforms.

Chapter 1 - module 2

Suggests creating a brand new email address to prevent hacking and phishing attacks. Explains why and when you'll need it.

Chapter 1 - module 3 (iOS / Android)

This module covers creating an Instagram account using either iOS or Android. Covers name, username, password and best security practices. Expect a full walkthrough of the account setup process for each platform.

Chapter 1 - module 4

This module covers all the Instagram settings for each version of the app, iOS/Android.

Account verification and configuring all the settings. It's a complete walkthrough of all the fields and options available. It explains why you should use different things for each field. You think you should just use your real name? Think again.
Anthony covers all the icons, menus, notifications, linked accounts, and privacy settings sections.

Simple yet powerful tips for bio design, using the right email address, link and more in your bio. Overall a good chapter to help you get a good foundation for your Instagram account. A good review for existing Instagram users.

Chapter 1 - module 5

I noticed the first "mistake" with a blatant spelling error in the title of this module. Most people would criticize this as being careless or low-quality, but being a content creator myself I can overlook this. So far the content and training videos have been really good, so this doesn’t bother me.

Great chapter to help you protect your account against hackers and thieves. Best practices and tips to help Instagram recover your account for you should you ever have a problem with it. Also, covers how to get in if you lose or forget your password.

Chapter 1 - module 6

This module dives further into the configuration for bio, including picture and details for a better bio. A couple of neat little tricks to make your bio stand out and be more efficient. Some of the differences between using a photo vs. a logo.

Chapter 1 - module 7

This is an interesting module, it’s about 18 minutes of analyzing profiles of over 15 accounts. Covers the good and the bad, and how each profile might be improved upon with small tips and tweaks.

Chapter 1 - module 8

This section covers how to set your link in your bio to maximize its effectiveness. One of the things I disagree with is using a bit.ly link.

I think Bit.ly should be the last option to make a short link. Instead, I would recommend using your blog to create a redirect or use a custom URL shortener with your own short domain using something like Linktrackr.

If you want to link to a social media profile, you can use your own website to create a redirect to make the link look clean like Anthony recommends. I covered that in this blog post before.

Chapter 1 - module 9 & 10 (Android and iOS version)

A module covering some of the apps that Anthony recommends as essential helper apps. The only issue I have with this module is that some of these apps may become popular or die depending on user interaction so they can change with time. I think you can focus on the functionality and maybe find alternatives that you prefer.

The apps are meant to enhance your Instagram experience and to make you more efficient. These apps cover a few things that Instagram lacks and help you with some efficiency and productivity hacks to save you time.

Chapter 1 - module 11

Covers direct messaging, the ins and outs. - This might be the least useful module from chapter 1. At least it was for me, but if you’ve never used Instagram before, you should go through it to understand how the internal Instagram messaging system works.

Chapter 1 - module 12

An overview of the various places where you can find new content, explore, search, places and hashtags. A good overview of these Instagram features. This may be useful if you’ve been using Instagram but never actually ventured into these areas, but a must for anybody new to Instagram.

Covers how to find accounts, content, how to determine which accounts are verified and legitimate, also ties back to picking your name and understanding how your choices affect your discoverability.

Also, covers some of the ideas behind what niches work and how people are making money on Instagram; seems like a good segue to the next sections.

In conclusion to chapter 1, these are my thoughts.

This is a great introductory chapter to the Instagram world. It's good whether you're looking to extend your reach or make money from Instagram. I haven't gotten to the "make money" so when I get to it, I'll let you know what I think.  And you should go through it whether you've been on Instagram for a while or are just about to get started. It is especially important if you're going to really put effort into growing your Instagram following because if you don't have the basics right, not even

You should go through this chapter whether you've been on Instagram for a while or are just about to get started. It is especially important if you're going to really put effort into growing your Instagram following because if you don't have the basics right, not even Social Runner can help you.

For those of you that have gone through this, let me know what you thought about it in the comments, do you agree with my assessment? Chapter 2 is next and I'll probably give you the rundown of that section in a few days. Stay tuned!

The post Instagram Course Review. Wolfmillionaire’s InstaWealth Growth System Chapter 1 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I want to integrate Instagram into my blogging and monetization strategy, so I need to grow the numbers. That's just how social media works. Numbers and engagement rule the social media world. When I started this new experiment, 11 days ago, I had 890 followers. Today I just broke past 1300. THANK YOU, everyone, that has joined me so far!

That's approximately 36 new followers per day, so that's pretty good I think. I'm sure it could be better, but I don't have boobs, fancy supercars, and I don't travel to exotic destinations every other day. My Instagram account is about my experiences as an entrepreneur, blogger, and vlogger. I teach how to use WordPress, how to do affiliate marketing, how to monetize your blog and all the stuff that comes with it so I'll post about that from time to time.

I'm learning to post better photos, to use hashtags and to create more engagement through engagement with other accounts. I knew what to do, but doing it consistently and effectively is totally different.

I have some ideas of what I need to do, and I've seen how other people do what I'm trying to accomplish. I like some of the techniques that people suggest and I loathe some of the other methods that some people use. The worst technique of all is when a "big account" follows you and you get excited, you like their posts, leave some comments and then follow back, just for them to immediately unfollow you.

This is a shitty trick and I'm already sick of it and I'm only 11 days into my growth spurt. I guess it's part of the game, but it's still a total asshole move #sorrynotsorry. Yeah if you do that, I'm calling you out. You're not a celebrity, you don't have to keep your following number at 71 and doing so deliberately just makes you look like a douche, not to mention that you ruin the experience for other accounts trying to grow and trying to engage with you. And I'm not the only one that feels this way.

I follow people whose content I like regardless of the niche they're in because I have many interests. The only reason I unfollow you is if you post a ton of pictures back to back and clutter my feed, or if your posts turn out to be really low quality. This rarely happens because I spend time looking at the accounts before I decide to follow so I know that I will most likely be interested in future content.

With that said, I'm using a number of tools to help me achieve the goal of 5000 followers. At this pace, I might reach that goal in 4 - 5 months, but as with most social media, I think that once I build more momentum the numbers may accelerate. Or I might crash and burn, We'll see.

The Tools & Resources

Here's a quick list of the tools and resources I'm using. I will be doing a review of some of these on their own blog post.

FotoJet (link)- Image creation app to help with quotes, photo editing and stuff like that. I normally use Photoshop and I know it well, but sometimes it's overkill. Fotojet so far seems like a great alternative.

FollowCop (link)- App for Android, helps me find out who is doing that ass*hole move I mentioned above, and also tells me who are the most engaged followers, who is leaving me comments, liking my stuff, and all that stuff so that I can stay on top of it. Instagram only shows about 24 hours of activity history so it's easy to miss some interaction; this helps a lot so my followers and new followers don't feel neglected. Don't worry, I'll get back to you sooner than later!

SocialRunner (link) - A service that helps you find engaged users in your niche. I would recommend you check it out if you want to try what I'm doing. They have a 3-day trial, 1-month or 3-month plan. If you want to save 15%, use this coupon: OSCAR20. You fill out an extensive questionnaire, they'll get in touch with you and then they help you find users and help you grow the account. I like this because they don't follow others on my behalf; I want to do that myself. A full review of this coming in the next week or two.

Buffer  (link)- I use this to schedule posts in advance for Instagram. Also, I'm using the term "schedule" loosely because, with Instagram, you can't really schedule posts automatically like you can do for Twitter or Facebook; heck Facebook lets you schedule posts within their own service! For Instagram, Buffer takes the photos and your caption and then sends you a notification on your mobile device when it's time to post. Buffer adds the photo to Instagram and copies the caption to your clipboard so you can finish up the Instagram post before publishing.

InstaWealth Growth System by @Wolfmillionaire (link) - An extensive course to help you use an Instagram account to make money. Walks you through everything you need to accomplish this; I've just finished reviewing Chapter 1; it has 12 modules, and it's pretty good. I'll share my thoughts in a post within a couple days.

Notegraphy (link)- An app to help you create stylish quotes which you can then repost on Instagram. I'm not thrilled with this one but I've used it a couple times with various results. Android version linked, not sure if they have iOS.

Quoter (link) - Another app to help with quotes, this one comes with a database of quotes you can use. I've only used it to make my own, but unfortunately, I'm not thrilled with the results either. Android version linked, not sure if they have iOS.

Grow Your Blog FB Group (link) - A great group of bloggers that help each other with growth and engagement. Use sparingly and follow the rules, or you'll get banned.

And of course, I use the Instagram app a lot. I do most of my commenting, liking and following from the app on my phone or from the Instagram website on my desktop. I also have an IFTTT recipe that posts my Instagram photos to Twitter, but I'm thinking that's not the best strategy if I want to grow my IG account. The way I have that setup right now makes it so I post the actual photo to Twitter, so then people that see it on Twitter don't really need to go to Instagram to see it. This is a double-edged sword; on one hand, I'm giving the content to my Twitter followers exactly where they are, right then and now; on the other hand, they have no reason to follow through with the link to go to my Instagram account. I'll have to decide on that one.

Talk soon!

The post Instagram Growth Journey, Thoughts Tips & Resources. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I decided to completely clean up house and start from scratch. I started unfollowing people on Twitter one at a time, but that's a long tedious process, and it's very easy to get distracted.

Then I tried using tools like Rewst.com or Manageflitter.com but those don't really have a straight up mass unfollow tool. I love Rewst, don't get me wrong, but I needed a nuclear option for this task.

I had forgotten why I was following most people, so I had to clean up my account.

The solution

So here's the solution I found to work and might work for you if you are in the same boat.

Start off by creating a couple of lists where you will put people that you don't want to lose track of. I already had a number of lists so I just made sure the people I really want to follow were on one of the lists I had.

Then I found this Chrome extension called: Twitter unfollow. The extension works really well and it's easy to use.

Keep in mind that if you are following more than a few hundred people, the extension might stop working before it finishes unfollowing everybody. This happens because Twitter has limits in place to prevent people from trying to game the system by following thousands of accounts and then unfollowing them all right away.

How to use the extension

1. It's easy to install, just go to the link, install it and it will show up as an icon on your toolbar.Small inconspicuous icon denotes that you have installed the mass unfollow extension.
2. Go to your following page on Twitter, this is the link: https://twitter.com/following
3. On your following page, you'll notice a new button that says "mass unfollow." Click that button and sit back until it's finished.

   

If the extension stops working, wait a day and try again. There probably isn't anything wrong with it, the problem might be that you have reached one or more limits in your account.

For me, the Twitter unfollow extension stopped mass unfollowing at around 700 people. In 24 hours I'll run it again and keep doing this until I reach 0 following.

Enter the lists!

After you have unfollowed all the people, then that's where the lists I have in place are going to come in handy. I can then go to those lists and follow the people I want to follow again and the natural order of things is restored.

There are a couple of caveats when you mass unfollow everybody.

Expect a lot of people to unfollow you as well.

Some people will only follow you as a "follow-back" and they don't really care about what you have to say. That's okay, this will give you a more accurate number of the people that actually follow you and are paying attention. Think of it as a purge.

Twitter has limits

Twitter has limits in place when it comes to following and unfollowing people at high rates. You may need to do this process over a period of several days and wait 24 hours to run another batch of unfollows.

Keep in mind, when you finish mass unfollowing, you may not be able to unfollow people manually or even follow people again for 24 hours or longer. Twitter doesn't release all the details about their limits, but it's a combination of the actual amount of followers and following, as well as your account age and usage in your account.

So that's it, easy and straight forward method of unfollowing everybody, also known as mass unfollow. If you want to learn how to get more followers then check out this post.

The post How to Mass Unfollow on Twitter appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

First a couple of disclosures, I am loving Snapchat. I first thought it was goofy, but I've come to embrace it and I think it's pretty awesome. I also see it growing and maturing quite a bit. I expect it to be a huge contender in the social media space within the next 6 - 12 months. It's already worth north of 20 Billion, so don't dismiss it anymore.

What is that ghost image with all the black dots?

It's called a Snapcode. Everybody that joins Snapchat gets their own unique Snapcode. It's similar to a QR code or a barcode, but only works with Snapchat at the moment. It is used as a way for you to follow other people, and for people to follow you. You simply scan it or take a picture of someone's Snapcode and then you can add them to your account. If you make your Snapcode available to the public, then other people can also add you the same way.

Can I change my Snapcode?

Yes. If you shared your Snapcode and you are getting added by people or strangers and you don't like that, you can request a new Snapcode here (requires Snapchat account).

You can also download a high resolution version of your Snapcode from the web version of your account so you can customize it. Just follow the guidelines and make sure you test it a lot before you print it or share it, sometimes you could break the functionality and make your snapcode useless.

Where do I find people to follow on Snapchat?

Some people consider the lack of discoverability in Snapchat a curse while others see it as a blessing. Regardless of how you feel about it, the reality is that you can't browse through a directory or category listing to find other people, there are no "recommended" sections, and there is no way to find people on Snapchat.

You have to know your friends on Snapchat already, so that means you need to be in contact with them somehow before you get to connect with them on Snapchat. Then you can share each other's usernames. The only discovery feature on Snapchat is that it can scan through your contact list and let you know if any of your contacts are already on Snapchat, see the next question.

But you pretty much have to go out and find new people on your own. 

As more people get on Snapchat and it becomes more popular, you'll see the snapcode will start showing up in various places. Some companies, like LA Print & Design are printing them on t-shirts and hoodies. You'll also notice them in the news, online, on blogs, on Twitter, but you have to be on the lookout for that and be ready.

There's a better way though, there are two websites I use to discover amazing people.

One is called Ghostcodes. Ghostcodes acts as a directory and lets you browse through tons of people that you may find interesting based on different categories. Thanks to Carolina for the tip on this.

The other website is called Snapdex. Snapdex is both a directory and a rating system for snapchatters, and thanks to @Stringstory for bringing this to my attention.

There's also a huge opportunity to find new people to add when you meet in person, like at a conference or workshop or a class. See: Add Nearby option below, in the next question.

How do I add somebody on Snapchat?

To connect with somebody on Snapchat, you need to find them (see previous question), then you can add them like you do on any other network. Adding someone on Snapchat is the same thing as "following" them. There are four methods you can use to add somebody on Snapchat, let me explain each one:

Add by Username - This lets you add somebody if you know their username, just type it in and voila!

Add from Address Book - This option will let you add people from your contacts list that are already using Snapchat. You'll see two sections when you pick this option, the first part will show you all the people that are already using Snapchat and are part of your address book; you can click on the button next to their name to add them. The second part will show you the rest of the people in your address book and allow you to invite them to join Snapchat.

Add by Snapcode - There are two ways of adding people by using their Snapcodes. First, if you see a Snapcode on a magazine, or a t-shirt, a sticker, or TV, you can take a picture of it. Then you can use the "add by Snapcode" option to scan that code directly from your phone gallery. You can also take a screenshot of a Snapcode.

The second option is to use the Snapchat camera to do a "live scan" of the Snapcode instead of taking a picture to scan later. See "How do I scan a Snapcode?" below for more details.

Add Nearby - If you're in a room with a lot of other people using Snapchat, like a classroom, or a conference, you can ask people to activate this option and then you'll see them when you click on it yourself. This is by far the easiest way to have a group of people connect with each other on Snapchat if they meet in person.

Share Username - This is about having other people add you and it is how you can get your own link to share with other people. When you click on this option, you'll be asked to share your snapchat link with any app you want, like Twitter, or email, or just text so you can copy and paste it anywhere you want. You can also just write your own link by following this format:

https://www.snapchat.com/add/thepapidaddy

Just replace "thepapidaddy" with your own name.

How do I scan a Snapcode?

There are two ways to follow somebody by their snapcode. One is to take a picture of a snapcode, or a screenshot with your phone, then scan that from the Snapchat add friends menu. The other option is to do a live scan of a snapcode using the camera in snapchat.

Here are detailed instructions on how to do both:

Add from Snapcode:

1. Take a picture or a screenshot of the snapcode so it saves to your phone's picture gallery.

2. Go to the "ghost" icon at the top of your Snapchat app.

3. Click on Add Friends

4. Click on Add by Snapcode.

5. This will bring up your camera roll, and you can then double-tap the snapcode to add that person. A quick note about this, in my experience sometimes this doesn't work the first time around and sometimes you have to tap the snapcode a few times rapidly for it to work.

Add using the live scan option on a Snapcode

1. Open Snapchat and go to the camera (rear facing).
2. Find the Snapcode you want to add, tap and hold. After a second or so, Snapchat will bring up a dialog box for you to add that person.

This animated image from Snapchat explains it well:

If you use Snapchat, are you a Snapper? or a Snapchatter? Or...

This is a funny question, but I think the best answer I found to this was from Quora, the answer is: Snapchatter.

What are Snapchat points?

When you start using Snapchat, you start accumulating points. This is called your Snapchat score. Right now, the points are calculated by some secret formula that Snapchat hasn't released and probably won't release anytime soon. But this is what Snapchat says about your score:

Your Snapchat score is a special equation combining the number of Snaps you've sent and received, Stories you've posted, and other factors.

What I know is that you get points for sending snaps to friends and having them open them. It seems that you also get points for adding and getting people to add you. It seems that using the various features in the app also help you get more points, like stickers, geofilters, etc.

Sometimes you'll see your score jump significantly and sometimes it seems to increase slower than the stock market during the recession. As of right now, the Snapchat score might be the biggest vanity metric in social media.

Wrapping it up

There are so many other questions I have and I'm sure new ones will come up, but I hope these will help you get started with Snapchat. Please let me know your thoughts or any other questions below in the comments or on Twitter.

The post Snapchat Tips, Questions and Answers appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So is Google listening AND recording everything you say?

Well, why don't we explore and expose the truth for everyone to see? That's exactly what I did in the video below. I took a look at my own account to see exactly what Google has saved. Does it have my voice recordings of everything I've said to and around my phone? Does it listen when I'm not even using the search function?

Google Tracking Other Activity

One of the things you see in the video is the Snapchat entry. It shows only briefly for a moment but I mentioned it. After I recorded the video I went back in to explore what this was all about. There were similar entries for Fitbit, and Twitter.

Turns out that because I'm using an Android phone and appears I've given Google permission to collect this type of data, the activity on my phone is also recorded. Not everything is recorded, but enough information to paint a good picture of everything I've done in any particular day.

Specifically, the Snapchat entry showcased how many times and at what time I had accessed the Snapchat app on my phone, the same applied to Twitter and Fitbit. It has recorded when I opened the app and how many times.

There are also the actual searches I've done at any given time, on Chrome, on Google (while logged in), and on Youtube, at least. Maybe more. If you want to see your own data saved by Google, you can go to My Activity page, linked right here.

What Can Google Do With This Information?

I can make a lot of conjectures about how I would use that data if I were Google. I would certainly be able to aggregate all that and average it out in order to present you with an advertisement related to Snapchat at just the right time. Or Twitter, or Fitbit, or whatever other app.

For example, if Google had this nailed down --and I don't have a reason to believe they don't-- then they can sell advertisement to a Snapchat index for example, like Snapdex or Ghostcodes and guarantee that Snapchat users would be targeted and not just anybody. They can even sell advertisement directly to Snapchat so they can send you targeted ads based on what you open before and after using the Snapchat app!

Far fetched? I don't think so, this is exactly how Google has stayed relevant all these years with their advertisement business. This is what they do and I don't expect one of the most profitable and powerful corporations in history to lose at this game. I'm just not concerned because of a couple reasons.

I like advertisements to be targeted to me instead of seeing random ads, and I know I have the option to partially or completely turn off the data collection and archival. But my questions to you are these:

Does this concern you? Did you know about this? And if you didn't know, are you inclined to turn these options off now that you know? Let me know in the comments or Twitter.

The post Google Listens And Records Everything You Say appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

And under most circumstances, I would agree with you. I mean, if you pick to be a plumber, sometimes you're going to have to deal with shit. Sometimes it's going to be waste-deep! Nonetheless, when you see how far he went to do his job, you'd agree with me that this guy probably did deserve a little pat on the back.

According to Inside Edition and the pictures floating around online, Jimmie Cox, the plumber, dove in about one half of his body, submerging himself upside down, just to fix a broken pipe. That's dedication, that's grit, and that's like Gary Vaynerchuk would say hustle.

Inside Edition even put him in touch with Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, just to talk and stuff. Pretty cool, right? I'd be excited if I made the news and then talked to a celebrity about why I got on the news wouldn't you?

But what I noticed was a small part of the story where Wrangler noticed that Jimmie was wearing their jeans, so they sent the guy a year's supply of jeans. This is a brand that was paying attention and took a great opportunity to help and elevate their brand.

Kudos to Wrangler for listening to social media and using it in a positive way to give something back. If you ask me, they could have sent this guy a lifetime worth of jeans and still come out ahead. Even invite him to a store, or a factory to record the story and do some videos with him. Some people would think that's too opportunistic, but I don't.

The fails in this story? All the other brands that could have leveraged this but didn't. Think about his favorite breakfast spot, or his favorite coffee shop, even a plumber's tool outlet. All of them could have recognized his efforts and sent him a little something. Free breakfast, or free coffee for a month or even a new tool, courtesy of _____________. That was the fail.

Another example why you should be using social media AND listening to what's going on around you, especially locally, in your town, in your area, and in your industry. If this sounds like too much effort, or if you think that I'm crazy to suggest this, take a look at my review of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook... or better yet, get yourself a copy and read it. You can thank me later. By the way, you can now add me on Snapchat.

Update: A little later after I wrote this, I found another weird thing... one of Wrangler's twitter accounts is set to private, the one that is linked to from a Google card --arguably the most important one. This is sketchy, but I'm sure they have their reasons. Whatever it is, it tells me that they're not in social 100%, they're hesitant, or they have their legal counsel up in their business too much. Guys, relax, open up.

Update 2: I'm guessing that they're protecting their name by locking "WranglerJeans" and using their shorter Wrangler account. Smart!

The post Brand Wins by Giving Free Jeans for a Year to Jimmie the Plumber appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But a quote caught my eye and I thought I'd make a quick graphic for it and share it with you. Here you go:

If you want to tweet this out use the link below and it should come through with the image when you post it.

[bctt tweet="There is no sale without the story; no knockout without the setup. -- Gary Vaynerchuk " username="notagrouch"]

The post No Story, No Sale. No setup, No Sale. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This allows you to switch between two or more Instagram accounts without having to logout of one and login to the other one. If you need to manage multiple Instagram accounts, this is how you do it.

How to use multiple accounts with Instagram

Here is how you activate the feature if you want to take advantage of it, the screenshots are based on Android, but the iOS version of Instagram is almost identical

1 Make sure you have the latest version of the Instagram app installed. This works for iOS and Android.

2 Login to one of your Instagram accounts and go to the Options menu.

3 Scroll all the way to the bottom of the options and look for the "Add Account" option

This will prompt a new login window.

4 Enter the username and password for the second account you want to use.

5 If all went well, you now have a small icon on the bottom right corner of your screens. This is how you switch accounts.

To switch accounts, you long-press the icon representing the account you're currently using and this will bring up a menu where you can pick the other account.

That's it, pretty simple and easy to do!

The post How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Minds is an open source encrypted social network with the ability for you to monetize your content. It's not like anything that is already out there.

For example Tsu tries to pay you a share of the money made with advertisements shown on your content; but nobody is really making money with it and it has become a spam and junk center. I dont think it will survive much longer.

So this is not Tsu, and it's not Facebook, but it has some gamification incentives and a way for you to make money with your content on a P2P basis.

In Minds, I can pay for boosted posts and you can also make deals with individuals to help promote content. You set your price, you call the shots.

Let me give you a quick getting started guide with Minds.com

Please keep in mind, that the site is still in beta so a few things may seem clunky, but it's very promising.

Sign up for an account

You sign up by visiting Minds.com, you don't need to provide any personal information beyond a username of your choice, and your email address. You can also do all this through their mobile app (Android, IOS)

My username is Oscar Gonzalez, feel free to follow me, or as it is called here, subscribe to me.

Customize your profile

The first screen you'll see is your profile and you can edit it by clicking on the pencil icon. You can always get back to this spot by using your profile icon on the top right corner.

You can customize your header banner, your avatar and bio from this page. It's a really elegant interface. The date picker to select your birthday is a little odd, but it's simple enough.

This is what I came up with on the first try, it feels a little similar to Facebook but the whole thing is a lot simpler and cleaner. I really like it.

Getting acquainted with the user interface

The top right corner has a small navigation menu with some neat features. Because the network is fully open sourced, you can actually submit a bug here and it will get looked at. If you are feeling adventurous you can also submit a feature request.

There is also an area where you can review your stats on your boosted content. Unlike Facebook, you can promote your regular posts on your profile so they get more visibility.

The small bell represents any alerts that are new since you checked lasta.

The last icon before your profile, gives you access to your wallet screen. In order for you to boost your content, you need to have credits and this is where your credits show up.

Your avatar button takes you to your profile where you can edit your profile picture, banner picture and bio.

Lastly, the three dots next to your profile open up a few more options. You can logout, adjust your global settings for the site or switch to the old interface.

This is a refreshing experience

The user experience is clean and even though the network is still in Beta, it feels solid. The user interface is clean and elegant and everything is simplified compared to Facebook or Twitter.

When you visit your alerts, you can see everything that has happened recently and you can take action from there.

The first few alerts help you get started with finding new content to explore. And as people find you, you'll be notified here when someone subscribes to you.

There is a gamification element too

This has been the downfall for many networks that have tried it but I think Minds.com has the right idea and execution. Certain actions give you credits which you can then spend to promote your content.

As you join, you'll get about 110 points or so to start. 100 for joining, then you'll get 10 points everyday for a "daily login" and you get one point for voting on someone else's post.

One thing I noticed is that they seem to be breaking the secret rules of social networks. That action which takes the most effort or commitment is, or should be the most valuable. For example, a comment is more valuable than a like, and a share should be more valuable than both comments and likes.

Case in point, if you like someone else's post, you'll get a point. But you will not get a point if you leave a comment, you should get more than one point because this is arguably a more valuable action. It represents more engagement.

After your profile is done, you can start using the site. Here's a quick rundown of what's available.

The action menu

The site features an icon-only action menu on the left hand side and if you're new to the site, the icons may not be intuitive enough for you to just figure it out. Here's a breakdown of what you can find there.

Some of the sections highlighted above have a few sub-menu actions. For example, the blog section lets you view featured blogposts, search for blogposts and create your own.

The blogging section is pretty standard and it has a WYSIWYG interface that works fine. Here is the first blogpost I created with it.

The most compelling features of the site

Social networks come and go, but the need for privacy is increasing and this may just be the best attempt at helping us with that. Minds.com is addressing this in two ways, the chats and the network are encrypted so people can't sniff what you're doing on the site.

The other way to help with privacy is to make the software open source. Developers can read through the code and figure out how things work, there is no hidden algorithm and "secret sauce."

The guys from Diaspora tried this before, but unfortunately a few years later the project is almost dead because it was too disjointed, Minds.com addresses this issue by offering a central location to interact with your connections.

Monetization is important for me and for other people that use social media sites for networking and business, and I really like the model offered by Minds. I acquired about 3000 credits and I will be putting the promoted and boost features to the test over the next week or so. I'll let you know how that goes.

For now, why don't you give it a try. Come join me, explore this new network.

The post Minds The New Social Network appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

You should try to make it tone of the events. I know it's tough to get up and be there by 9am on Saturdays, but if you are involved in social media, or digital marketing or if you want to become involved with this, then you must attend this meeting.

The post SMMOC Whiteboard Notes appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So I went to check up on that feature and see if my followers had changed and that's when I found about the new name for Statigram. Iconosquare is an interesting name.

Their blogpost calls for a growth in features and service focus as the reason for the new name. I am not totally in love with the name, but I hope they continue to give us amazing tools.

Update: Later on I found out that Instagram changed their TOS for their API and developers and apps apparently aren't allowed to use "gram" in their name. This makes sense and explains why Statigram and other Instagram apps have changed their name.

Finding out where your Instgram followers come from is one of the things that helps to see if you're attracting the right crowd. At least for business, it is important to try to target the right followers geographically.

Another thing I noticed about Iconosquare in one of their newsletters was this:

I am definitely looking forward to testing out the connection with Hootsuite to see what is available to help manage accounts on Instagram. Currently I only manage 3 accounts but I'm starting to get more and more inquiries about doing Instagram account management. We'll see how that goes.

Besides giving you an idea of where your Instagram followers come from, Iconosquare gives you "snapshots" which are tiny infographics that give you stats about your account.

The infographics that Iconosquare gives you these infographics or snapshots:

Infographic for Profile Stuff

• The most liked picture in your account
• Your most used, or presumably your favorite filter
• The percentage of pictures and video you post with filters
• Total media posted
• How many likes you have given out
• How many followers you have

The Location infographic shows where most of your followers come from and a breakdown of the next four spots along with a map that shows hot-spots. There is one iconographic that shows your favorite Igers and a count of how many likes you've given them.

The last three aim at the achievements part of your Instagram experience by showing you the first post you made on instagram, one graphic that shows your three "firsts": The first post you made, the first Iger that you followed, and the first Iger that followed you. Then there is your most liked post.

Overall, Statigram, er Iconosquare continues to be one of my favorite Instagram app and you should check it out if you want to manage your Instagram account better.

The post Statigram is now Iconosquare appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Topics and notes

Swarm - some people say it's "too difficult." It just works. Install the app and get it to work like millions of other people or don't. I like it. I like the separate functions from Foursquare and Swarm.

Why use Swarm? - To check in and let people know where you are. It can spark a connection or an impromptu meeting. Great way to discover where your friends or colleagues are or have been going to.

Here's a great writeup about the reasons Foursquare split Foursquare into Foursquare and Swarm. Geez, that was confusing.

For those of you new to the whole SMMOC thing, let me tell you about it quickly then resume with the notes:

Social Media Mastermind Orange County

SMMOC meets on Saturdays with some exceptions. Check out their meetup page for the latest schedule. Here's a quick promo video I made for the meetup:

With the new location and a sense of renewal and a fresh start, I can only expect SMMOC to reach new heights in attendance and quality of the meetings. Come and re-visit if you haven't been in a while.

And if you've never been, then what the (enter favorite expletive here) are you waiting for? People from San Diego all the way up to Ventura County drive on Saturdays to make this place one of the hotbeds of Social Media discussions in the West Coast. #TrueStory

Ok thanks... back to the notes

Ello - A simple Facebook. Still in beta and by private invite only. The general consensus is that "it will not take off" it is too simple. It is too late to start a new "social network."

Some people still waiting for an invite. Comments to that... "Too little too late, Son"

Questions? Can you use it anonymously?

I like it, it's clean and I feel like it's the next attempt at fixing what the Diaspora group set out to fix. It may be too little too late, or could just vanish into the sad backburner of abandoned projects. But for now, I am all for it. You can find me at @Notagrouch there as well.

Muut

A simple way of running a group. The point here was that it is hard to convince people to leave Facebook to do anything outside of Facebook.

---
The real legacy of Facebook or Twitter or Google... their power comes in the form of the login api they have. They are almost everywhere. We use them even without knowing.

Long after the "social networks" craze goes down, Facebook, Twitter and Google will have the login system to millions of accounts and apps.

---
Video

Video Hosting - Where to host your video? Vimeo, Youtube and Wistia. -- all are inexpensive. Don't even try to host your own, it's not worth it from any perspective unless people are paying for access and you can cover all costs (nearly impossible). Under most circumstances, most businesses need to use one of those three solutions.

* My personal recommendations are Youtube and Vimeo. Youtube first, Vimeo only if you absolutley must control who, where and when your video is watched. Please consult with an experienced professional before you restrict your video to a smaller audience than Youtube has to offer.

Music Rights for a commercial video or Youtube videos

Look for "royalty free" music. Some will be free and some will be paid. I recommend you look at TeknoAxe for a great collection of totally free, downloadable royalty free songs to use. You can also pay for the rights to use songs.

Some of the sites out there with music or sound effects have music created for this purpose so they'll have one song with variations of it, matching bumpers, intros and outros.

Here are a few examples:
http://www.neosound.com
http://www.pond5.com
http://www.videoblocks.com
http://audiojungle.net
http://www.youtube.com/user/teknoaxe

http://incompetech.com (thanks Valerie!)

Thanks @Zengy for noting those down in the SMMOC Secret group.

You can also use commercial musical hits by purchasing licensing through 3rd party brokers. Usually the fees are very expensive for online media but this option is great if you want to play a song for an audience at a paid event. Say the "Eye of the Tiger" at a motivational conference. -- Yes I did go there with the cheesiest example I could think of.

I use TeknoAxe's music for almost every video I make, for fun or profit, for me or clients. See my latest project where I use his music here: PapiDaddyTV. But it has a certain vibe to it that may not fit all projects.

One more place worth mentioning is the AudioJungle website by Envato. You can buy music clips for most uses for $5.00 to $30.00 and from $50.00 to $400 for massive broadcast rights, like in a movie or TV with audiences greater than 10,000 or something like that. But the cheapest license is good enough to use in Youtube videos. This is probably the best bang for your buck in terms of quality, diversity and completeness.
---
Apple pay - not ready in iOS. Comes out in about a week.
---

Facebook Hypertargeting

Introduced my buddy Brian Switchkow to the #SMMOC crowd. Want to learn Facebook Hypertargeting? Learn what he has been up to with Facebook ads. Amazing, incredible and admittedly a little creepy. The prank stories are awesome though.

Business Insider - http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-facebook-advertising-to-prank-and-scare-people-2014-9

AdWeek - http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/roommate-makes-his-friend-paranoid-creepy-facebook-ads-160320

Brian's Own Blog - http://mysocialsherpa.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/

 Pictures from the meetup

The post #SMMOC Meetup Notes appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

For me as a Linkedin user, the feature is annoying and frankly pretty useless. I get so annoyed by notifications of people endorsing me and for Linkedin asking me to endorse others that I don't even pay much attention to it.

But annoyances aside, let me tell you why this feature is pretty unreliable.

I'm a pretty open guy, and on most networks, if you add me, friend me, follow me, I am okay with that. If I have to allow you to follow me then I do. After all, these are networks used to connect with people so I'm happy to do that.

The part that makes the Linkedin endorsements crap is that there is absolutely no filter or criteria to help build some context around the endorsements.

Anyone can give you an endorsement. Problem number one. The topics are created by you, there is no verification or validity. That's problem number two. And Linkedin touts these endorsements as a useful way of vetting someone you want to hire or do business with. That's problem number 3, and im sure I could find out more problems.

But I hope you heed my warning, do not trust these endorsements. Stick to personal references, real interviews and the history of a person before you hire them or launch a partnership.

Here's a perfect example of this. I received this this morning. It prompted me to write this short post for you:

You see, I don't actually know Jean Blalock. Linkedin says we've been connected since November 2012, but that doesn't mean anything to me. She most likely requested to connect but hasnt actually contacted me. She might be a connection hoarder.

The problem is compounded by her inability to understand how endorsements are supposed to work. And unfortunately this is not isolated to Jean here. It happens to many people that think they're "helping" you by giving you these endorsements.

Jean's intentions are certainly good here, she's trying to help me out (and thank you Jean). But it doesn't help. And it doesn't help you. Because the fact is that Jean and I have never, ever worked together.

There is a remote possibility that she endorsed me about "Linux" because she read some of my blogposts or forum answers about Linux and thought that I did a terrific job in that sense. But that's pretty doubtful and I'm pretty sure that's not the case here.

She probably just found one of the topics I have listed in my profile and decided to endorse it. But even if she tried helping by highlighting a prominent topic on my profile. What does that mean to you? What does it mean that I have one more endorsement about Linux?

Does that mean that I know how to install it? Does that mean that I know how to fix it? Develop on it? troubleshoot it? Does this talk about beginner skills or advanced knowledge?

Nothing. It doesn't tell you anything about me. This is why Linkedin endorsements are pure crap. They're empty. They're just a ploy to get you to stay on the site longer and "interact" more. And to some degree,  to all the LION types, it's a way to keep them busy and make them feel useful.  Like: "yeah, I gave 50 endorsements today, I helped 50 people out today." Really, some people believe that.

The post Linkedin Endorsements are Crap appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So I was glad to see this pop-up the other day when I logged into my account. At least it seems like they're trying to keep our information safe.

The paranoid in me tells me that this is just a way to make us feel like they're doing something but really maintaining the status quo.

It reads:

Hi Oscar -- Sorry to interrupt. You haven't changed who can see your posts lately, so we just wanted to make sure you're sharing this post with the right audience. (Your current setting is Public, though you can change this hwneever you post.) Learn more

Then it asks who do you want to share this post with?

The post This Made me Feel Better about Facebook appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

There's a cool app that lets you create a short video summarizing some of your social activity and that includes Twitter. They say that a picture is worth a 1000 words, then a video must be worth 1,000,000 words right? Well here's a quick view of my Twitter account.

The app is called Vizify and you can find it here. It does a lot more than create a visualization of your Twitter account, but that may be the funnest feature they offer. Enjoy!

The post My Twitter Account in 55 Seconds appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Sam aka Sammytown started the punk rock band Fang in the early 80s but a series if events led to the band's break up. You can read all about it on Wikipedia if you want details.

[singlepic id=713 w=650 h=0 float=center]

Sam is a pretty cool guy. At first I was a little bit nervous. I can't deny it, reading about his past certainly makes you a bit nervous if you're going to meet him and don't know much more than what you read online. But the doubts and uncertainty was washed away as soon as I met him. He's a down to earth dude and actually pretty pleasant to be around. So go and check out his Twitter account and friend him or follow him. Some great things should be coming out of his new venture.

The post With Sam McBride (aka Sammytown) appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Growing my social media presence and activity also helps me in two fronts. Increases my value in Empire Avenue, which in turn gives me more Eaves to promote my business, and it also helps me rank better in search engines. More importantly, social media is part of my system. I talked about having systems in my Online Profits Guide. And don't be mistaken, social media is personal, but I also use it for business.

Despite what many people will have you believe, it is rather simple to increase your numbers in social media and do it in a meaningful and rewarding way. And trust me, numbers matter; I'll explain more on that later. You simply have to be consistent and good. You don't even have to be great.

You know my strategy and goals, and you have an idea of my tactics. So here I'm going to spell out the tactics for each of the major networks. This will also serve as my daily workbook. You could use it as well and it is in fact an abbreviated version of the basic tactics design I provide for my customers.

Facebook personal profile.

• Post 1 interesting picture.
• Post 1 interesting news article.
• Post 1 question.
• Respond to 5 interesting posts.
• Like 30 - 50 things.

Why? Because Facebook holds most of the everyday conversations about anything going on. People are there, and don't want to leave. Total time to complete, approximately 15 min.

Facebook business page. Oscarstech.

• Post 3 news articles
• Post 1 interesting question/challenge
• Re-share 2 - 5 relevant posts from existing audience.

Total time to complete, approx 10 min.

Facebook business page. IM Scoop.

• Post 5 articles
• Post 1 customized image/infographic
• re-share 2 - 5 relevant posts.

Time to complete, approx 15 min.

Twitter. @notagrouch

• Tweet 4 - 9 original content packed tweets
• Talk to 5 different people
• Retweet 5 good tweets
• Follow 10 new people

Why? Twitter is like the radio. Topics and talks come and go, but you can build relationships that transcend Twitter if you cultivate them. Time to complete, approx 20 min.

Instagram. @notagrouch

• Post 5 photos
• like and/or comment 15 - 30 photos

Time to complete, approx 20 min. Why? Instagram is growing incredibly fast, engagement is huge and I really like it.

A bit of background.

The reason for using all these is to stay in touch with people, have people remember me and think of me when they need one of my services and to increase my earnings on Empire Avenue so I can help promote my blog and other businesses. The total time comes to about an hour and a half, and this is strictly for the mechanics of nurturing these networks. These actions pretty much guarantee activity and growth, but I still have to spend some personal time. I expect the time to vary between 45 min - 2 hours each day. It is also worth nothing that the facebook business pages can be scheduled and automated in advance so the time may be less in those cases.

It is about the numbers

The social media purists will have you believe that it is better to have 100 loyal followers than 1000 followers that may not always read your postings. But I disagree. Social media marketing is the same as any other marketing. It is about the numbers and if you target the right groups and the right audience, the more numbers you have, the better you're off. You can engage with more people if you have more people following you. You have better chances of reaching your target audience if more people have a chance at being exposed to your content. So long as your readers are real, having a lot of them also positions you as a leader in the eyes of your prospects. It's a psychological thing. Low numbers don't impress anyone.

But it is also about engagement

Something else worth noting is that what I posted and shared up here is purely mechanical. Yes, the numbers matter tremendously, but you must also know that having a large following doesn't guarantee engagement or genuine interactions with people. Those two aspects of social networking cannot be automated or predicted. I still have to care about people, talk to them at a personal level and make deep meaningful connections and build relationships.

Don't mistake the tools and schedule I am giving you as a way to "do social media right." There is another part to the equation and that's being genuine, personal and actually engage with people. Follow my schedule if you want, but also see how I actually interact and use each network. I'll talk more about that in upcoming blogposts; it's just hard teaching you how to be sociable and human.

The post Social media growth tactics appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you go to statigram, you can visit the promote tab and allow it to create a Facebook cover photo based on your latest instagram photos.

It's a pretty cool little feature that Statigram offers, and just like the app itself, it is free. Every month or so I switch out my cover on Facebook and I use one of the covers created using Statigram.

This is my latest one:

The one thing I did was change the branding from statigram to my own website, the part that says "notagrouch.com" But the rest of it was all done automatically for me and it takes just a few seconds to create.

The post Get a slick Facebook cover photo from your instagram photos appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The next step was easier than I thought, I just had to delete dead pages or pages that never took off. A few weeks back I tried to just do it but I missed the option where I could do this and just kept putting it off. But it is actually super simple to delete a Facebook page.

Do it with caution. In coupled cases Facebook asked me for my password to confirm I wanted to delete that page; other cases the page was simply deleted it once I clicked on the confirmation button.

The post How to delete a Facebook Page appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Check out the stats. They're nothing to write home about. As I mentioned before, I really neglected my own personal websites in lieu of working on other social networks. And so I'm reversing some of that. All the changes to Facebook, Instagram and other social networks really irk me. I can't imagine the pain that is going to be when when we all have a mass exodus from Facebook. See... if you have your own website, you never have to worry about stuff like that.

You have your posts and they're always there, Or not. You decide, and you're in control of your content. Go ahead and share your content on all the networks you'd like, but always have it come back around to a web property that you own. That's a great golden tip you need to learn early. Many websites will go out of business in just a year or two after opening their doors and attracting your limited attention span. Then you have all this content out on limbo and the next night, the company closes door and there goes all your content as well!

So in increasing my traffic, I'm focusing on sharing more info here on my own website and also on the other websites I own. For example, You'll see a lot more youtube videos on the Videos section because I'm going to share with you anytime I appear in a video. Whether it is mine or someone else's which tends to happen quite a bit.

I am also trying to the Live Blogging thing. Frankly I'm doing it differently than you've seen before because I'm live blogging an entire week at a time. Why a week and not a daily thing? I'm not sure. I think this is a big step and commitment for me so to commit to posting "live" activity to a weekly log, I think that's a good start. If you ever want to follow the live blogging, just go to my main page and look for Live Blogging. The weekly live blog should be there, but there will also be other live blogged events that I get to attend or feel like commenting on.

By the way, if you haven't signed up for my newsletter and email, i recommend you do. I'm starting to send some really good emails and a 30 day path to a kick-ass business website program. This is only available here, through me, via email and you need to sign up at notagrouch.com to get the emails. Trust me, I've got some great information to share with you and early access to giveaways, discounted programs and private coaching systems I'm building.

The post Increasing Traffic Each Week appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Oust.me is a territory conquering game that awards badges and titles based on your conquests. Unlike Foursquare, you take over entire territories and not just single locations.

The post Foursquare is Good for Coupons and Games appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

What's #Foodiechats all about?

I found #FoodieChats by accident while I was working on one of my other accounts @incentivegifts. FoodieChats seems to be as the name suggests a Twitter chat for foodies and food lovers. Lots of good stuff went on, here's their official website:

http://www.foodiechats.com/

Below is a recap of the tweets I found would represent the chat well. Thanks for reading and visiting!

By the looks of it, @steveGOgreen is the host of the twitter chat. He's another person I invest in at the time-sucking ever-growing Empire Avenue. Find Steve here http://empireavenue.com/STEVEGOGREEN.

What do people talk about on #Foodiechats

Maggie Rupel - @MaggieRupel
Choux full of vanilla pastry cream #foodiechats http://t.co/0MqnSUoP

This little pastry reminded me of #mochilato in Irvine. So tasty!

Mary Kay - @MKinChiTown
Bacon wrapped scallop @drinkingbirdchi. It's HUGE. #TWSS #foodiechats http://t.co/NyAT3Mgu

Totally different than the previous picture, but this is an absolute favorite of mine. I love scallops, bacon wrapped? even better. It's making my mouth water just thinking about it.

Shirley Lum - @ATasteofWorld
Next: "burger" flavoured potato chips;-) @kingofthenerds I mean really, who the hell wants "hot dog" flavoured potato chips? #FoodieChats

Meh, I'd say who the hell wants a "burger" flavoured anything other than burgers? burger-flavor isn't like bacon-flavor. One does not simply make something "burger-flavored".

Steve Green - @steveGOgreen
I am editing #Foodiechats 1-Year Video & U R in it @seamless @ramon_deleon @eatatunion @chi_dmb @NickCanHelpU @mommacuisine

One of the things regular #Foodiechats members have to look forward is a video that @steveGOgreen is putting together.

Steve Green - @steveGOgreen
Love your segment in #Foodiechats 1-Year Video @mafiahairdreser

O apparently the video is up already? I just don't know where it is... must investigate.

Michelle - @browneyedbaker
Nothing better than a blackened hot dog fresh off the charcoal grill! Pass the ketchup!

Delicious food, not the healthiest, but who cares? I'm imagining a good grilled hot dog just because of this tweet!

#Foodiechats - @FoodieChats
Spicy Tina and avocado go great together. #foodiechats http://t.co/Jd0tpJsK

Spicy Tuna & avocado, yes, a great combination. Avocado goes well with everything, including bacon. Sweet, sour or savory Avocado is the man!

Green Global Travel - @GreenGlobalTrvl
RT @myschatheriault 20 Cost-Effective Cucumber #Recipe Ideas #foodiechats

This was a great post with a lot of good ideas. I love cucumber, but didn't think about all these options before.sd

In Closing

It seems that I joined #FoodieChats at an odd time. The 25th should be much more active as it appears that there is a real life meetup for this in San Francisco I think. Well anyway, That does it for testing out more "live blogging" with Dashter.

The post FoodieChat on Twitter 6-20-2012 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Yelp has Check-in Offers, Foursquare has Specials and now we have Google Offers. I like competition and I like options and choices. I have a feeling that this will put a fire under foursquare to improve and innovate once again. I'm a little bored with foursquare actually.

Get your business in all three networks, take ownership of your venues and use the features available for free to offer incentives for existing customers and new customers. It's a free resource! Why wouldn't you use them?

They even take a stab at Groupon's model by saying in the intro video "you don't even have to buy the offer in advance" you just get it when you are in that location.

The post Google Offers Launches to compete with Yelp and Foursquare. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Buy Stuff that supports the causes you love, that's their pitch. Check them out.

Buy stuff to support causes you love | Cauzoom.

The post Buy stuff to support causes you love with Cauzoom appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

One thousand words should fit into this image nicely, but I still give you some annotations, check it out.

1. The link goes to a known website and it is not Gelson's own website where they might sell Heirloom tomatoes. In fact, if you think about it, the whole post almost implies that you can purchase this type of tomatoes at Gelson's. But they don't tell you that, instead they give you the link to a recipe where you can use these tomatoes. Also goes along with Seth Godin's idea of telling stories.
2. Niiiice picture showing the tomatoes. We're visual creatures, feed us!
3. The post was well received by the community.
4. Someone in the community thought it would be good to share this post with their own group of friends, somehwere outside of the Gelson's wall. This is huge for a business because it is an endorsement from your customer to their friends, family or collegues.
5. This is a good sign, the community is supportive of each other. Not everybody leaves comments, some people (the majority) simply read the posts. Other people like the posts and other people's comments to show support, agreement, or acknowledgment of the new post or comment.
6. This is also a good sign, the company is actually available and responsive to people's feedback.

I've told you about the good stuff I see with this post, can you spot any opportunities missed? Let me know in the comments.

The post Example of a Good Facebook Post appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Spend 10, get 5.
spend 25, get 10.
Free Sandwich on 6th Check-in.
Free wine tasting, 3 or 4 times.
Free bottle of wine, 2 times.
Free Wendy's food, 4 or 5 times.

I'll be back with more.

The post Foursquare Check-in Specials appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you didn't know about Formulists, it doesn't matter much now, but I'll give you a quick rundown.

Formulists was a tool to help you manage Twitter lists. You could create lists based on certain parameters and then Formulists would keep those lists up-to-date. For example, a list of people that often talk to you directly.

The service never really worked for me because you had to constantly keep logging into it, and the time it was supposed to save me by making my lists was instead taken up by me having to log into the service.

Maybe this is part of why they didn't succeed. But I wish the team the best, and like they said in their goodbye blogpost, I'm sure they've learned a lot of good lessons along the way. Every failure is a true success if you learn and adjust. It is rumored that Henry Ford failed at least three times before FORD motors was born. Imagine if he had given up at the first or second try!

Good luck to Formulists, it was nice to know ya.

For those of you that want to find something that can help you with Twitter lists, take a look at SocialBro. Even though it isn't automatic, it can help you dial in a group of people and easily add them to your lists.

The post Formulists for Twitter is Going Away appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Will you be using promoted tweets now that they're starting to show up more?

What do you think about Argyle Social's promoted tweet? Here's the link they sent you to:

The post Twitter Promoted Tweets Now Showing up on your timeline appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.