Everything Social Networking
STEVEKHART.COM
You’ll find all kinds of stuff posted at my blog, so keep checking back. You’ll find a lot of information related to social networking, Facebook, Twitter, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), just cool internet tools and technologies.
Bio:
Name: Steve Hart
Job: Interactive Development Director for a large media communications company.
Interest: Everything Social Networks, SEO, Blogs, and Media Publishing.
Get paid to wear t-shirts – tshirts4hire.com
It’s a relative simple idea…get paid to wear t-shirts. Tshirts4hire.com has come up this the unique advertising solution: Hire people to wear your advertisement on t-shirt.
As it reads on their website: “Tshirts4hire seeks to unite businesses with people through an expressive and innovative marketing and advertising medium: the clothes you wear. Founded on the premise that clothing is a powerful communication and networking tool, our goal is to unite businesses and entrepreneurs in a mutually beneficial manner.”
Well, I had to give it a try (wearing the t-shirt). After a simple “get paid to wear a t-shirt” sign up process, I filled out my profile. I noted that I worked in the Internet industry and stood out (6’7) in a crowd making me an ideal for any advertiser.
Weeks later I received an email from Howard at tshirts4hire.com asking if I would like to participate by wearing one of their t-shirts (for a small payment). I agreed and told them I wear a 2XL. They mailed it to me a few days later. We agreed on a day that I would wear their t-shirt.
The t-shirt has their logo on the front and a simple description on the back…
The basic message was to text “ICU” to 62626. In doing so, you’d receive an text about getting more information on tshirts4hire.com. Give it a try.
I got more questions about the shirt than people actually texting “ICU”, which is okay since the point is to advertise. I definitely receive a few strange looks and even a “did you lose a bet?” response. The shirt and I did what we needed and advertised the heck out of tshirts4hire.com.
Give it a try. What do you have to lose? Sign-up to advertise or wear a t-shirt at www.tshits4hire.com and let me know what you think.
What would you do for $5, Fiverr.com
What would you do for $5; or what would you offer for $5?
Well, now there’s a site that will help you fulfill your dreams of getting rich…$5 at a time. Fiverr.com is a marketplace for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5.
Need a girlfriend for a week on Facebook?
This guy will sell you his soul…
While there are a ton of funny or bizarre things people will do for $5, there are some actual practical offers.
Lots of logo creators…
Even some commercial content…
Anyone can create a offer on Fiverr.com. Just sign up and post away. The money exchange is all handled through PayPal. You can even leave, or read, reviews of the offer. Offers, or gigs, are divided up into categories or you can search for something specific. Use the ‘popularity” and “rating’ filter links to see which gigis people like best.
What’s the most bizarre or funny Fiverr you’ve come across?
Google Sky Map For Your Phone
Just got the new Motorola Droid phone and I love it! It makes my blackberry seem archaic. Comparing the Droid to a blackberry is like comparing a standard cell phone to an 1980 brick sized cell phone…you know what I’m talking about.
So I started downloading applications. There are a ton of them in the “market place”. A few pretty cool ones, but the best is Google Sky Map. It turns you phone into a personal astronomer. Want to know where Uranus is? (insert joke from a 7 year old here).
Using your Android phone orientation sensors, just hold the phone towards the sky and the screen displays the stars and planets regardless of cloud coverage. It uses the device’s compass, GPS, and accelerometer to see the constellations, planets, and stars.
And best of all, it FREE!
What’s your favorite Droid or iPone app?
2009 LA Auto Show, Check Out the Pictures
The 2009 LA Auto Show was this past two weeks at the LA convention center.
The overall show was uninspiring. The major manufactures had little to offer in new designs. There were a few new concept cars and most of the major auto manufactures were there. Ferrari, Lamborgini, and Nissan were absence. Ford, Cheverolet, Audi, Honda, BMW, and Porsche had very good showrooms.
We went on a weekend which may have been a mistake. We showed up early, but it got crowded fast. Now I love kids but…there were 1000′s of 5 year olds lined up to sit in cars while their parents took the cutest pictures. I guess the playgound at McDonalds was closed.
Here’s a slideshow of my favorite cars.
Standouts:
2010 Cheverolet Camaro
2010 Jeep Concept Car
2010 Fisker Hybrid - Irvine California
2010 Toyota
2010 Volvo Concept Car
2009 Austin Martin Convertable
Free 16 Page Printed Photo Book of Your Facebook Photos
Hot Prints is a new site and Facebook application that will create a photo ablum of you and your friends for FREE! Select up to 16 pages of photos, and Hot Prints will print and ship you the album for free.
What’s the catch? They will insert removable ads in between the album pages. Also, there is a 1 album a month limit.
Try out there Facebook App: http://apps.facebook.com/hotprints/entry.htm
You will get one FREE photo book per month (including shipping) sponsored by Hot Prints select advertising partners. You can also buy your book for $2.99 with no advertisements.
Dont worry the advertisement will be a removable insert and will NOT share the page with any of your photos. (offer subject to change)
Facebook Adding Vanity URL Names – Don’t Wait!
Let the gold rush begin Friday night at 9:01pm…Finally, Facebook has joined the ranks of most other social networking sites. On Friday night, Facebook will allow you to have your personalised vanity URL for your Facebook profile.
Instead of http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=615109271
You can now have http://www.facebook.com/stevekhart
You can sign up for a username starting at 9:01 p.m. PDT on Friday, June 12, 2009, by visiting http://www.facebook.com/username/. After selecting one for your application or company name, you will see a green check mark indicating that the name is available before you actually claim it.
Consisting of at least five characters (alphanumeric or full stop) the ability to register your http://www.facebook.co.uk/username will become available on 12:01am EDT on Saturday June 13th, so if you really want your name (and it happens to be John Smith) then I’d get there quickly as they’ll probably be gone pretty quick in this Facebook vanity URL land rush.
To stop people from getting a load of names this will only be available to accounts that are already open and active, and you will also need to be careful about what you choose because they will not be able to be changed after selection.
-Steve Hart
Tags: facebook, Profiles, Social Network, Vanity URL
LiveKick.com Concert Tracking Site
I came across this new site that helps you track concert dates, provides concerts recommendations and has an artist search engine.
www.Livekick.com helps you find all the live concerts and tickets for your favorite artists playing in your area.
After registering, you can select that artists you want to track concert dates. You can either search by artist or select a recommended artists. Once it picks up your tastes, it will start recommending bands and artist. They do a good job of finding ‘like’ artists.
You can also import your iTunes library and they will set up concert tracking for all artists in you iTunes library. they also support importing music from services such as MySpace Music, Last.fm, Pandora, iLike or Rhapsody.
Once you have your artists and bands selected, you can have their service notify by email of up coming concert dates. They also have some great API’s to embed your selection into your site.
Once you’ve found a concert you like, Livekick helps you find the best and the cheapest available tickets online from many ticketing web sites.
Under the hood, Livekick has developed a robust live concerts search engine that continuously searches large ticket web sites such as Ticketmaster, Livenation, Stubhub, Tickets.com and eBay as well as user-generated content sites such as MySpace Music.
- Steve Hart
Bored with the Internet – Comic
I came across this great comic from the team over at http://xkcd.com.
- Steve Hart
Tags: Comic, Entertainment, funny, life
How to drive traffic to your WordPress.com blog
In response to a recent comment I received from Alex Hwang at http://thetechadvisors.wordpress.com, here’s my suggestions on increasing traffic on your www.wordpress.com blog. While I don’t claim to be an expert in this area, I have seen some recent success with these techniques on this blog. There are many more ideas to drive traffic, but they require a personal install of WordPress.
Here are my suggestions:
- Submit sitemap to Google – WordPress XML Sitemaps Submittal to Google
- Have a Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious accounts
- Distribute your posts to various social sites:
- Focus on Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious or other sites within your industry
- Check out My Social Network Publishing Model
- Brand your microblog post with your site name – see www.twitterfeed.com
- Create a Twitter direct mail auto response to new followers
- Check out Twitter Follower Auto-Responding Email Message
- Brand your blog in the direct message
- Fully utilize the WordPress SEO fields
- Become part of the community – Post comments on other sites with references to your blog. They will in turn post on your blog
- Check your site out at www.googleRankings.com Website Diagnostics Panel
- Cross site linking is key – find other sites that will link to your site and return the favor
- Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.
- Review your sites stats to see what posts are driving traffic, and focus on those topics
- Blog on a consistent periodic basis so your readers know when to check back
- Create a “Rap up” post reviewing the post from the past week or month depending on your post frequency
- Promote your posts on Digg and StumpleUpon. Unfortunately these are manual processes
- Make sure you tag your posts!
- Create great content
- Ensure you blog has a purpose
- Create hyper links to other sites within your posts
- Link Building Tricks for Search Engine Optimization SEO
- Use graphics/photos – pay attention to meta tags (Alt tag, description, link url) .
- Ask your readers for their opinions and or suggestions
- Focus on hot topics and keywords
- Post titles should contain relevant keywords. Use catchy headlines
Remember, driving traffic takes time. If your blog is new, don’t expect lots of traffic. Stick to it and keep blogging. If your content is good, readers will find you following the steps above.
If you have other suggestoins, I like to hear from you.
- Steve Hart
Tags: Blog, driving traffic, increasing traffic, Page views, SEO, wordpress blog
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- Steve Hart
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