The Charlatans And Other Bands Too Prevelant On The Web
Beware The Charlatans, ladies and gentlemen beware.
The Charlatans are far too prevelant on the web.
Of course I am not referring to the excellent indie band of the 1990s but rather their online namesakes.
The Charlatans are plentiful and give the rest of us web professionals a bad name. Some are easier to spot than others -- I am not going to name names but I will, hopefully, give some pointers on how to recognise them.
The Charlatans, Telling (SEO) Stories
The Charlatans are telling stories about SEO and how they can get you to the top of the world, aka Google. Some are harmless and merely miss out the fundamental steps. Others do real damage, which can take months to fix.
Charlatan SEOs: Difficult for the unwary to spot, but if any of the points on my “You need an SEO or a new one if:” post apply, they’re one of the Charlatans.
The Pretenders, Don’t Get Me (Social Media) Wrong
With Twitter exploding across the web, the number of overnight social media gurus is rising exponentially. How to spot The Pretenders?
Check the following, follower and update figures on their twitter profile to filter out the Twitter spammers
Don’t get me wrong, checking their Twitter profile is not the end of it, but it will at least filter out the more obvious Pretenders.
Seether, Fake It (Web Design)
Thankfully this lot of Fakes are easy for everyone to spot. My rule of thumb is that professional web designers do not aim to make my eyes bleed. Garish colours, animated flashing buttons and comic sans are but a few characteristics.
It’s easy to fake it. The design may look shiny but not checking the code could cost traffic, maybe even bandwidth charges.
Nice Weather For Ducks
The amount of ducking filletantes* plying their trade is bound to rise with unemployment skyrocketing.
While they give the rest of us a bad name, they make more work for us in the long run.
Thank you Charlatans, Pretenders, [those who] Fake it and of course the filletantes.
*Shout out to QuoteSnack for reminding me of the beauty of spoonerisms.
This entry was written by , posted on January 21, 2009 at 8:26 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Being Visible, Or My Theory On Avatars
Avatars is what profile pictures are called. [Just in case :)]
If you use an avatar, you’re involved in some form of social interaction. That interaction is a form of social media. Whether you are on twitter or the local ferret forum you are in a community, being social and publishing.
You Are Known By Your Avatar And Name
You are known within that community by your name and your avatar. On popular social sites and services there will be many users listed together. The “Who Dugg This” panel on Digg is an extremely good example:
The Who Dugg It panel on Digg
It is much easier to spot someone if they have an avatar that sticks out, even at 16×16 pixels.
Be Consistently Visible
If you use many social sites and services where you have the same friends, it makes sense to have the same avatar so they can spot you in the crowd. Wherever possible use the same username too. If someone else has already got your username of choice at least your avatar will let them know it’s you. After all, they are friends with you, not your username. It’s all about people.
Very Visible Avatars
Avatars which work well are highly visible. To test my theory I’d like to conduct a little experiment with you.
Andrew Burnett is a very common name. Unfortunately “andrewburnett” was taken on Digg so I had to choose another username. The experiment is very simple:
What is my username in the picture at the top of this post?:
andrewburnett avatar
Is Being Visible Important?
You tell me, I know I’d like people to be able to spot me quickly.
This entry was written by , posted on January 13, 2009 at 2:05 am, filed under social media. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The Feel Good Factor Of Social Media
Social Media is all about people and emotion. Last week I realised getting out and meeting local people I interact with on Twitter was an exceptionally good idea. There is so much more you can say over coffee or beer than in 140 characters. People.
I also had my ego stroked. Emotion. Last week I spotted this from @clarocada [David Petherick]:
@clarocada's tweet
When I clicked on the link to Top 83 Tweets of 2008 I got a wonderful surprise! There was @andrewburnett at the top of the list!
When People Feel Good
They tell other people. They retweet. They StumbleUpon. They Friendfeed. I know I do :)
When people tell other people through their various channels wonderful things start to happen:
Most popular blog post of last 6 months
Traffic up 334%
Silly amounts of traffic
traffic up 665% over yesterday's high!
Make People Feel Good
Making people feel good means more people visit your website, it is that simple. Even better, if more people visit your site how are you going to feel?
How are you going to feel if more than 3 times as many people visit your website today compared with yesterday? How are you going to feel if 6 times today’s visitors come tomorrow? Thought so, me too.
Is Social Media Worth It?
Of course it is. Not only can you make others feel good but you can feel good doing it too!
This entry was written by , posted on January 12, 2009 at 5:32 am, filed under social media. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Social Media Without The Internet
This week has been a real eye opener for me.
Twitter As Social Media
Since May last year I have been twittering away on twitter [@andrewburnett ]. All the while I’ve been following others who entertain, interest and often educate me.
It has all felt very very social. But until this week I didn’t realise I was missing out on possibly the single greatest benefit of twitter: Meeting fellow twitts
Social Media In Real Life
This week I took the plunge and headed along to RefreshEdinburgh on Wednesday evening where I met (in no particular order):
@nonimage [Andy Lobban]
@sneeu [John Sutherland]
@roryf [Rory Fitzpatrick]
@nelstrom [Andrew Neil]
@EdinburghMenus [he who hath no card getteth his real name forgotten ;)].
Thursday evening my good lady wife accompanied me to a talk on social media (of all things) by Mike Coulter for the Edinburgh Internet Marketing Meetup Group . First and foremost it was a great talk with many insights, but it also brought many twitts together in one room. I met (again in no particular order):
@jimwolffman
@dav_hamill
@colingilchrist
and of course @mikecoulter.
If I’d managed to go to the pub afterwards no doubt I’d have collected even more @s! Mike plugged the Edinburgh Coffee Morning meet up which is every Friday morning – you’ve guessed it, I went.
This morning (Friday) I met (along with others from last night)
@jonmountjoy
@darciec
[edit]I didn’t get your twitter handles at the time, but found you since:
@hazelh
@nevstokes
[/edit]
So What?
As much as you can squeeze into 140 characters nothing beats meeting people face to face, talking over a coffee and exchanging knowledge and ideas. That’s what!
This entry was written by , posted on January 9, 2009 at 7:43 pm, filed under social media. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Thank You Twitter Spammers
Somebody somewhere is “teaching” people how to “build massive networks overnight” I just know it. Well with love from me to you, *thanks.
I started seeing profiles following me [ @andrewburnett ] which disturbed me. I have only been on Twitter since May 2008, since then I have seen some disturbing things, but not like this! Things that may put me off following back are the content of tweets or the website a follower has listed on their profile. There is a freshly laid dog-ploppy on my doorstep of late.
The Nature Of The Beast
These are devilish wee blighters, I’ll give them that. To start with I wondered how they did it, 1000+ followers with under 50 posts. It doesn’t matter HOW they do it (essentially what they do is add roughly 2000 people overnight, wait a couple of days and unfollow most of them again). What matters is WHY they do it: By getting huge networks of “blind followers” they have a larger target audience to unleash their nonsense on.
The Nature Of The Web
A prime example is plying her (or his) trade as I write – I’m making screenshots of the progress s/he is making. I took screenshots at 18:02, 22:41 and 23:32:
18:02 1999 following 1717 followers 22 updates.
22:41 105 following 1653 followers 22 updates.
23:32 1912 following 1906 followers 35 updates.
The Nature Of The Web Pt. II
As I write this there is a phishing attack appearing on Twitter, you may have seen it. Direct Messages are sent from friends saying “hey! check out this funny blog about you… h**p://jannawalitax.blogspot.com/” [link broken on purpose] the page you land on redirects you to another page inviting you to sign in to twitter. The sting is the page asking you to log in is very, very, VERY bogus. [Further post to come.]
What Next?
This twitterer will build up a following of however many thousand and over time become more difficult to spot. Then again, someone who wants to “build a massive network overnight” isn’t interested in the long term and will give up.
*thanks because the more intelligent of these halfwits have given up but didn’t stop following people. This inflates my number of followers making me seem more important than I really am.
Thanks again for following me mister/missus spammer but don’t expect a follow back :)
This entry was written by , posted on January 4, 2009 at 3:56 am, filed under Uncategorized and tagged spammers, twitter. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.