Facebook to Provide Frictionless Sharing

Facebook’s “Frictionless Sharing” is going to be powerful.

In case you hadn’t heard, it’s coming soon, and it works like this: If a visitor to your blog or website has enabled access, Facebook will automatically post your content on that user’s wall. They don’t need to “like” your post – just going there is enough to post the link on their wall: how cool is that?

If you think only young people use social networks, think again. According to the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of all Americans use social networking sites and more than 42 percent of Americans over the age of 50 use social media. There are millions of people of all shapes, sizes and interests, using Facebook every single day and they love it when Facebook makes it even easier for them to share – and 60% of U.S. Facebook users are over the age of 35.

How are You Using Facebook Now?

Your reaction to Frictionless Sharing may be, “So what? It doesn’t appear on my wall. How does it affect me? Take a look at how you’re using Facebook now.

Where is Your Traffic Coming From?

Take a look at your analytics and see where your visitors are coming from. If you have traffic from Facebook there is no way to tell who they are or why they came to your blog – all you can see is that they came through a Facebook link.

Maybe they came tbecause someone told them your blog was interesting. They visited because someone else told them to, not because of your search engine optimization. Right now, that is probably true of only a few visitors, but with Frictionless Sharing this is going to change very rapidly. Have you noticed how much information from your wall is shared following the recent Facebook changes?

Increase Your Connectivity Now!

If you’re like me, you worked hard to build your Facebook and Twitter friends, and then, once you got to a certain number (say 4,000) you left it to take its course. You probably focused on one niche, which may not be the best one for you now: the times they are a changin’! Now is the time to review who you want to connect with, and build your friends accordingly.

With Frictionless Sharing, anyone who comes to your blog (from Facebook or anywhere else) will automatically get a link posted on her wall, and all her friends will see it. This opens you to the 750 million current Facebook users without your having to do anything except attract some existing Facebook users to your blog! No other SEO is necessary.

What this means is that you need to provide something useful to the one person who visits your blog, like writing to him as if he were a real person, rather than a traffic statistic, for example. That way, he’ll want to come back from time to time to see what else you have of interest, and every time he does his “friends” get to see what he’s doing. Do you see the power in this?

His friends will want to see why he keeps going there, so they will visit, and their visit will appear on their walls. Soon, their friends will want to visit you:

now that’s viral!

Take Action Now!

So what do you need to do right now?

  • Post valuable content, so that people want to read what you have to say (yes – content is still king!)
  • Spread the word on Facebook (I’m sure you’re doing that already.)
  • Reconsider your niche. I’d love to hear your views on this, but I think this could be the end of niche marketing! You see, you have no idea where your net will be cast with Frictionless Sharing, so the wider your appeal the more chance you’ll attract buyers. I really hope this is true, because I have a hard time narrowing my niche: just look at the range of topics I cover!

Tell me what you think, and how you plan to use Frictionless Sharing.

Are You Trustworthy?

snake oilThere has been a pretty clear line drawn across the Internet Marketing industry lately. This line divides the ethical marketers from the snakes. You know, the scammers with all the hypey “auto pilot one click instant traffic riches.” The industry has had it, and many marketers have been very vocal about this recently. It appears that the scammers have simply pushed the envelope too far.

For years we’ve seen digital “product launches”… we’ve all become accustomed to it, a few pre-launch videos, maybe a free giveaway and then the big “reveal.” It’s all good and in many cases very useful stuff, at the very least its educational and entertaining. But lately, there have been quite a few “launches” that spewed outright lies on the industry. Outrageous claims, fictitious product creators portrayed by paid actors, fabricated and doctored images to serve as income proof for a product that can’t do what it claims or might not even exist.

Marketers and consumers from every niche have been speaking out more and more against the snakes and scammers. The top industry forums are full of threads about these crappy products and the snakes that make them. Bloggers have gone crazy putting these guys on blast and Facebook has been buzzing for months about it. There are hundreds of Youtube videos where marketers and consumers of digital info products and software are speaking their minds. I guess the final straw has broken the camel’s back.camels back

The public outcry was heard loud and clear by a select group of ethical marketers that have banded together to create the first website to unify the good guys and hold marketers accountable for their actions. The website is called IMTrustWorthy.com and it has several purposes for both internet marketers and consumers of digital products. The members have all agreed to abide by the IMTrustWorthy “Prudent Practices” of Internet marketing. This is a list of 12 rules that help protect consumers from fraud and hold the marketer to a high standard of commerce.

First off, IMTrustWorthy provides a “seal” image with your unique license number digitally imprinted. The seal code can be placed on your website for the world to see that you are a registered member of IMTrustWorthy. When a visitor clicks on the seal a window pops open with the marketer’s name, and rating. The window may also contain comments from other IMTrustWorthy members regarding the character and trustworthiness of the marketer in question.

A member’s rating is determined by an algorithm that takes the positive and negative feedback left on their site into high consideration. This is a lot like the feedback rating in eBay except here the feedback is demonstrated by 5 stars and the comments are displayed on the marketer’s profile page. This is so that a potential customer or JV can look at what other members are saying rather than just having to take the endorsement of the company that sold the seal. In other words, you can’t just “buy” your trustworthiness.

That being said, there is also a “Premier” membership available for $17 per month. The premier members have some additional features inside the members area, they get a multi-site license which enables them to use the seal on as many sites as they own. Also, they get access to a “Seal Generator”, this is a software that lets you create seals in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Premier members also get to load a banner and link for their site which rotates in the website and can potentially bring consumers back to their offer. Over all this is a pretty good value for only $17 when you consider the prices that those “other” seal companies out there charge.

One of the things that you’ll like the most about IMTrustWorthy is the social aspect and the ability to meet other GOOD guys. The website has a “JV WALL” this is basically a communication page where you can comment on the threads and connect with other marketers. There is also an internal messaging system. It’s no Facebook, (then again who needs another Facebook) but it is well suited to help marketers create joint venture partnerships and affiliations with other IMTrustWorthy members.

I think it’s about time that we band together and separate ourselves from the snakes and the scammers. All in all this website is a WIN for the good guys. Sure, there will be scammers that try to brandish the IMTrustWorthy seal, but the other members will quickly make that known in the comments and their rating will drop. IMTrustWorthy doesn’t actually rate the marketers, the members do. If you ask me, that’s a pretty fair shake and only the scammers need to be afraid. I suggest you create a free account and check it out for yourself.

Laptop Battery Life

Who remembers the song “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?”

Well, I just read an article on maximizing laptop battery life, and somehow that reminded me of the song (I know, twisted mind!)  There are few things as frustrating as running a laptop off the battery and having it die on you.  Why does it always happen at a critical moment? laptop computer

Murphy’s Law of laptop batteries states that if you need to run your laptop from the battery, that is the time the operating system will decide that you need to make an immediate critical update.  If you try to ignore it, it will keep reminding you that it is going to shut down your computer any minute.  So you frantically try to save everything you need so that you can shut it down yourself, because you know the battery will expire in the middle of the update!

The article described five things you can do to help the battery last longer.  Here they are, together with my comments and a bonus item.

Defrag Regularly

A fragmented drive uses up battery power fast, so defragging (when you’re on external power!) will help the battery last longer.  If you’re using Windows 7, this is done automatically for you (unless you’ve turned it off), and I’m told that Mac systems have less of problem with fragmentation anyway.  Presumably OSX has a better algorithm for handling it.

Cut Back on External Devices

They burn up the power, so it makes sense to minimize their use when you’re on battery.usb hamster wheel If you’re like me, all your USB ports are full whenever you’re connected to the power, so it makes sense to remove unnecessary devices when you’re on battery (including the mouse).  Wi-fi also puts an extra load on the battery.  Turn off your bluetooth, too if you’re not using it.

Maximize RAM

Memory costs a lot less than it used to, and maximizing your RAM will reduce the amount of disk activity, lessening the load on the battery.  The extra RAM will use more power, but unless you’re not planning on doing much computing it will be less than the disk thrashing will use.  And if you’re not doing much computing (including watching movies) you’re not worried about battery life!

Dim Your Screen

Laptops provide a simple way to do this for “power saver’ mode.  The screen uses a lot of energy.  Some other tricks may be available in your power saver mode, such as cutting back on the fan: use all the tricks you can.

Clean the Contacts

When did you last take the battery out and clean the contacts?  This is one of those tips that is so obvious that we tend to forget it.  A cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol works fine: just do it every month or so.

Exercise the Battery

I used to find that whenever I decided to run off battery it was totally dead, having been on charge since the day I bought the computer.  I think maybe batteries have improved now, but they still need exercise, just like the rest of us.  So run them down to exhaustion once in a while. Next month, I’ll be taking a long flight (about ten hours) so it will be interesting to see how long my battery will last after trying these tips.

On second thoughts, maybe I’ll just sleep …

Google +1 Button – What it Means to You

plus one

Are You Getting the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

Google has been working on the +1 button, and in the last month or so it has changed character.  It used to just add a count on your profile, where nobody saw it, but it’s now similar to the FacebookLike” button, which is what I suspect Google had in mind all along.  So what does this mean to you?

The big benefit I see in the +1 button is the ability to share content with specific groups of people, using Google Plus‘s “Circles”.  One of the frustrations I have found in Facebook is that this capability, although it exists, is not easy to implement.  I have over 4,000 “friends” on Facebook, and clearly not all of them are interested in the same topics.

Let’s suppose I’m working with Google Plus and have three circles: “Friends anddog Family”, “Colleagues” and “Internet Marketers“.  If my dog gets fleas I might choose to tell my friends and family, and perhaps my colleagues, but it’s doubtful if any internet marketing friends would find that very interesting unless they happen to be marketing flea powder.  (As it happens, I don’t have a dog, so please don’t inundate me with anti-flea information!)

On the other hand, if I have just found a new web hosting package that I like, most of my friends and family won’t be remotely interested, but my colleagues and internet marketers may be.  Do you see how neat this can be for segmenting your market and avoiding spamming family and friends?  I really wish this was as easy to do with Facebook.

What is the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

You guessed it!  Google uses the +1 ratings to help rank websites.  Of course, it’s not all they use, but it can certainly help your site to get better SEO rankings and hence more traffic.

Here is a video from Google explaining how you can use this new capability:

Try it out now by “+1“ing this article!

PS: If you figure out how to join the preview group, let me know! Google has not released the new capability to the rest of the world yet :-(