Have you seen this mashup ?

Empire Avenue – The social network that gives “Social Influence” a brand new value!

Your username is the ‘ticker symbol’. Your  social web activity and influence with your communities earn value.  Your friends can buy and sell you.  Depending on how well you do, you may just be the next CFO of your index (their term for your chosen area of interest). Which in-turn may land you the job of a lifetime, as the next infamous social media representative of a lucky fortune 500.

EmpireAvenue ” is the Social Media Exchange, where you can invest in any social media profile by buying their shares, meet new people, unlock Achievement badges, and earn boatloads of virtual cash by being active and social online! Buy shares in your friends, your followers, people with similar interests, brands you love, celebrities – anyone! All using a virtual currency and all for free!” – excerpt from empireavenue.com about page.

I just signed up and am still figuring it out, navigating my way through the multiple features and functions. The interface is a bit overwhelming, but as I become more familiar with the architecture, I find more ways to interact.

Although Empire Avenue could use some help and feedback to fine tune its interface for better usability, don’t let it distract you from the fun factor.  I’m sure your friends and colleagues would love to own a piece of you, well now they finally can.  Just don’t sell yourself short !  See how much I’m ‘worth’ these days - http://www.empireavenue.com/askjayson

Whats your ticker symbol?

Leave a comment below with your first impressions of Empire Ave and don’t forget to link to your (e) ticker.

As many of you, I too utilize social media as my main communication tool.

Yes I still check email, but I love the quick status messages from my friends, family, clients and colleagues.

We are a “byte sized” information society.   We scan web pages, we don’t read them.  We surf the net looking for what we want and if we don’t find it on the webpage within 7 seconds we move on to the next listing on our SERP (search engine result page).

I read so many blogs that the only way I can keep up with my interests is to subscribe to them with my RSS reader.   I use Google Reader, to enable me to see all the latest articles from multiple blogs in one place.

I use Seesmic Desktop to manage Twitter and Facebook, again so I can get all the information and respond from one application, just makes for more time efficiency.

One of my other primary social platforms is LinkedIn. I have made great contacts in the professional realm with LinkedIn groups and discussions, but I have to go to LinkedIn.com to participate.

Yes I can use ping.fm to post a status update, but I can not join a group, read current messages, visit my inbox, or comment on a discussion unless I go to LinkedIn.com.

So when are they going to get on board and allow developers access to hook into their program? Do they even have an API? Maybe, but not one that anyone is using to my knowledge, otherwise I know the guys at Seesmic would now have a LinkedIn tab.

Doesn’t this just make sense?

Hey LinkedIn do you wish to comment? Do you know this article is even here mentioning you? Guess we will wait and see.

What do you think? Would you like to see LinkedIn follow suit, like Facebook and Twitter and allow developers to give you easy access to manage your LinkedIn profile with your third party management tool of choice, without having to go to LinkedIn.com all the time?

Love to hear your thoughts.

I needed to point a domain to a new website I am developing, so I logged in to my GoDaddy account and noticed something very interesting on my domain manager screen.  There was a little blue Twitter button to the right.

Huh? Is GoDaddy an affiliate of Twitter Or is Twitter paying GoDaddy?

I rolled my mouse over the little blue button and a gray box pops up with an advertisement for me to join the conversation on Twitter.  I immediately asked myself, “What is GoDaddy getting out of promoting twitter?”  I thought Twitter was trying to make money and I really didn’t think they needed to spend on advertising.   So what gives?

Then I saw the little blue Twitter button again and again on a few other administration screens in my GoDaddy account, so I paid closer attention to where the twitter buttons were placed and carefully read the small print on the advertisement.

“Holy huge revenue opportunity batman!”

1. Is Twitter going to somehow capitalize on your user name domain name?  Twitter.com/askJayson is important to me.
2. How about adding some Social Media solutions and applications to you Twitter account,  for a small fee of course?
3. Are there Twitter gadgets and widgets in the works?  It would be pretty cool to have more interactivity on my twitter page.
4. Why Not?  Is your Twitter domain going to become your Social Media hub page on the web ?

So what does this all have to do with GoDaddy?  I am not entirely sure, but I do know you can now register your Twitter domain name through GoDaddy.

What are your thoughts about this Godaddy Twitter alliance.  Am I making some huge assumptions?  What do you think its all about?

What is your Twitter domain worth to you?

“Plug in the DISQUS comment system and bring out the best discussion on your website”

- from disqus home page

We all know the power of comments on our blogs.  They give us a mechanism for discussion, real feedback and personal opinions from our readers.  With comments, we are able to establish a connection and participate in the conversation with our audience.

But there is so much more we can do!

Disqus is a robust commenting system allow us to track our conversations, share our discussion with the likes of Friendfeed and Plaxo as well as always stay in touch by replying via email or our mobile phone.

Disqus enhances our experience and considerably steps up the interactivity by incorporating ratings and video comments.  Now that’s cool!

Ok, ok I can hear you.

“Come on Jayson, with all those components, you will need a programmer just to install it on your blog.”

Its easy as pie to implement.

Actually Disqus has done a great job with making their commenting system easy as pie to integrate into your blog.  The administrative area is very intuitive.  They have incorporated search engine friendly plugins , a complete data sync (whatever that is) but it sounds good, and widgets allow you to easily build your community.

Forget the boring simple text fields we usually see, Disqus is totally customizable to match the look and feel of your blog design.  Disqus has reinvented what it means to make a comment.

In their own words; ” there’s no difference between a great comment and a great blog post…people feel good about taking the time to speak (or type) their minds.”

I really can’t think of any reason not to have Disqus on your blog, unless you don’t want your readers talking to you, about you… “oh yeah, they are going to do that anyway.”

I would love to Disqus this with you!

All about domain names, usernames and email adresses…

Make sure You Get Them All!

I have a few new projects in the works and one of the first things I do is run extensive searches on name availability.  I search for top level domain names (.com, .net, .org) for the project name or with a keyword people would search for related to finding information about the project.

Domainers (people that buy and sell domain names) know this routine very well.  A good domain name is as important to your web presence as having a powerful social media strategy.

For example one of new projects is developing a directory of WordPress experts, developers and designers.  Since Automattic, the company that developed WordPress does not allow you to utilize “WordPress” in your domain name, a popular alternative is WP.  So I registered the domains WPCOOP.com, .net and .org.

Its very easy to search for available domain names with your favorite Registrar.  Most have them have a suggestion tool.  Remeber to try hyphens and numbers if your desired name is not available.  Personally I use domainsbot.com to search for available domain names.  Its a simple tool that searches TLD’s, provides suggested names and allows you to register your new found domain name with your preferred registrar.

Secure Your Personal Domain Name

If you do not own http:// your-personal-name . com, I highly recommend registering it now.  This is imperative if you are an authority, expert or professional service consultant or just a passionate blogger and want to build your online reputation.  After all when people are searching for you on the web, the first thing they will do is Google your name!

Do you have kids?  Secure their name as a domain name now, they will be very happy you did, especially when they become the next social media giant and gain world wide web recognition.

Secure Your User Name

Do you have a nickname or stage name?  One aspect of personal branding, we seem to overlook is securing our user name.  Every social media profile asks for a desired user name, which becomes as synonomous to you as your real name and sometimes people only know you by your nickname or user name.

Twitter is a perfect example for brand recognition built on user names.  Almost every profile you have out there will display your username, bookmarking sites, social networks, and even blog comments, so choose a unique, catchy and easy to remember username.

Need some help deciding on a username?  Check out this great service by namechk.com.  They will run an analysis and availability report on a username across the web.

Think about your industry, your passions and how family, friends and colleagues already know you.  As you know I love to help folks out with anything related to social media, WordPress and Twitter, especially.  My username is @askJayson, which is appropriate for me as I love to answer questions and solve problems.

Secure Your Personal Name and Username Email

Another important personal branding strategy is making sure you own your name and username as an email address.  I was reminded of this when I went to get a new google gmail account for my new project.  GMail also allows to check name availability before your register, so you can find a good one before you have to complete the entire registration process.  I recommend you register your personal name and username email with Google and Yahoo, considering they are continuing to develop social media applications where your username will get a lot of exposure.

Another side note: register your kids names!  All my kids (I only have 3) have a personal email address.  Its my way of ensuring atleast they will email me when its not cool to call your Dad on the phone anymore.

When I first signed up with Twitter, there were maybe 800,000 users. Today I believe there is approximately 8 million. With the ever increasing popularity of any network building platform, spam is always an issue. It seems that a lot of folks on twitter are obsessed with the number of followers they can attract, as if that was their only goal.

Now having numerous followers is not a bad thing, but they way we go about it may be questionable, especially if a Twitter Bot is your application of choice.

STOP Twitter SPAM

There is a new service to combat follower bots to ensure your followers are real people.  TrueTwit.com has developed an innovative application that sends you a direct message with a validation code that requires you to log in and validate your humaness. Great option for Twitter accounts with a large audience or anyone sick of getting followed by @bigboobedbrenda and her gang.

Why do owners fail at promoting their business with Social Media?

Because its too technically oriented, its time consuming, its a fad, its for kids, its for internet marketers, its not a proven marketing strategy, its this and its that….

A colleague and small business consultant of mine asked me to speak to a few very successful and rather conservative business owners about how social media could improve their business.

Here is a Answer

I talked to them about various social media platforms and current applications like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube and how these web applications could be utilized for promotion, marketing, customer service and retention.

Once I reached a point of discussing more of the technical aspects, one of the gentlemen stopped me and said,

“I just don’t get it.”

Was I speaking with too much tech talk or maybe assuming they had a firm understanding of the basics?  Maybe they thought I was just ‘another guy’ preaching about ‘the social media thing’.

Here I am in a t-shirt and bluejeans, (business casual in Boulder) discussing trending topics with guys in double breast suits, the serious CEO types.  So I said,

“What if you could hear a very well known venture capitalist and entrepreneur with extensive experience in the corporate culture, share with you how social media will help you build your business?”

Their answer:  “most definitely” and they finally got it, after watching this video.

Guy Kawasaki – Building Your Business With Social Media

You may or may not know Joshua Schachter but you definitely know his web 2.o app Delicious that was sold to Yahoo awhile back.  Since Josh has joined the team at Google, he still pursues his creative innovations.  His latest gig is A Tiny Thread.

A Tiny Thread is a (tiny) Twitter application with a simple premise, take tweets and weave them together to form a type of conversation.  You can start a new thread and comment on existing threads, thus creating a continuous conversation based on a specific topic.

The site is sparse without bells and whistles which makes sense considering the purpose of the application.  I think Josh has created a unique way to display threaded comments and can be used for collaborating on ideas.

Example: What if you wanted to know if your followers like black tea or green tea?  Start a thread with the question, black tea or green tea? your question will be posted to your Twitter account as “I started a thread: black or green tea? (link to discussion).  When you comment on a thread, the tiny thread application will send a tweet stating “I joined a thread: black or green tea (link to discussion).

There are still a few bugs crawling, but so far so good.

How do you use A Tiny Thread?

First I think getting one million followers on Twitter is a double edged sword.  Yes it may support the fact that you are very popular and people really want to hear what you have to say.  ON the other hand, how can you really pay attention to a million people, especially if your strategy for twitter is communication WITH and not AT your audience.

Attracting followers is all about you and your content.

Ask yourself; Why do you want people to follow you?  Are you a brand marketing services and products?  Then a large following is beneficial to reach the largest target market possible.  But what if you are like me?  A small independent entrepreneur promoting services to a niche market?  Well then, having a very specific, like minded audience is much more valuable.

One of the most important “must knows” when using Twitter is to have a clearly outlined strategy.  Tweeting is the task, the how. Your strategy is the Why and What For.

Example:

Strategy -
create conversations to solve entrepreneurs issues of web promotion utilizing social media

Tactics -
1) post updates to Twitter Facebook, LinkedIn and chosen forums and groups with links to informative 3rd party content.
2) post videos to YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler with tutorials and entertaining interviews.
3) write blog articles with step by step outline of successful social media marketing programs.
4) link all content to Twitter profile

Keep in mind that all your efforts must be cohesive delivering solution to solve the issue or problem.  Stay on course, be persistent. I continue to coach my clients on specifying one problem to solve.  Establish yourself as an expert within your area of knowledge, then move on to another focus.  Keep things simple.  People love simplicity and instant gratitude.

If you are a web designer that specializes in WordPress custom themes, then stick to delivering content about web design.  Don’t confuse your readership with information about video production or podcast creation.  You will only dilute your representation of being the great WordPress designer.

What is your strategy on Twitter?

Help others know of your successes and failures.  All questions and comments are welcome.

Listening to the quick 20 minute schpeel by John Alanis – I perked up pretty quickly when he mentioned that “Content is Not King”!

What!  I paused the video and tried to think about what he was going to say next.  Was he going to talk about that there is so much recycled content out there that you need to spin a unique personal message to stand out from the crowd?

Well even though I think that is important, John went on to another very important aspect we all need to master to engage our audience.

Listen to John, he knows what he’s talking about and let me know your opinion.