How to Network in a Web 2.0 World – Part 2.0

On 01.22.10, In Freelancing, Social Media, By John Rockefeller

Note: This is a continuation of part 1 of How to Network in a Web 2.0 World. Please read the first blog post on the subject before proceeding with this one.

What’s Next?

Now that you’ve got profiles at the 3 most popular social networking websites, it’s time to put them to good use. To do that, we’re going to leverage the equalizing power of the Internet to gain access to high-profile people in the markets you’re selling your services to or working in. You will be amazed how accessible CEOs and other top-tier people are on services like Twitter and Facebook.

Your Brand

Branding is an entire industry by itself and far out of the scope of this blog post. However, we can tackle a small part of it to get you on your way. The easiest way to help brand yourself is to have a consistent image that you’re delivering to people who see you. This way, they will remember you and associate you with that image. Think Coca-cola and you likely think of a red sign with white text. Or Nintendo brings up imagery of Mario.

Be sure that your profile picture is the same across all of the social networking sites you’re a part of. This way, when people see a thumbnail of your profile pic, they will remember who you are and associate you with it.

Another trick is to always use the same nickname or handle on every service. For example, my handle is Rocky1138. If you search for Rocky1138 on Google or Yahoo or Bing you will see a lot of the websites I write on or tweets from Twitter.

Facebook Vanity URLs

When adjusting your profile on Facebook you are presented with the option of creating a “vanity URL,” which is a word you associate in the Facebook website address with your Facebook profile. This is an easy way to make your Facebook profile memorable to people. For example, my Facebook profile is located at http://www.facebook.com/webprogrammer. Whenever anyone goes to that link, it will take them to my Facebook profile. Pick a good Vanity URL such as your name or something easy to remember that you wouldn’t mind putting on your business cards.

Twitter

Twitter will connect you with very important people around the world and give you access to those who can hire you or contract your services in the future. An easy way to get hold of the best people in your industry is to use a website like WeFollow.

WeFollow will show you the top Twitter accounts in the world for a search term you type in. If you type in “php” you will get 1,602 people you can follow, including the #1 twitterer which is coincidentally the person that invented PHP. After using Twitter for a few weeks to build up a tweet history, spend a day and a half to follow the entire list of people in your search. If even half of them follow you in return, that’s still potentially hundreds of like-minded people that will be listening and watching your tweets.

I have gotten plenty of work from people who’ve been following me on Twitter and got in touch with me because of something I tweeted about. This is a great way to get work.

I hope this has helped moves you forward in networking in a web 2.0 world. There’s still plenty more we can do, so keep an eye out for part 3 on the horizon.

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Response much? 1562 calls per minute to CRTC for do-not-call list on first day.

On 10.02.08, In News, By John Rockefeller

At that rate, they would have run through every single Canadian in 320 hours.

I’m glad that the CRTC has taken this step. It’s been in works for a long time. It’s not perfect as many have pointed out, but it’s a great start.

For those outside of Canada, the CRTC is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. They are the Canadian version of the American FCC. Basically they manage the airwaves, give out licenses to broadcast, that type of thing.

If you are Canadian and haven’t added yourself to the Federal Do-Not-Call list yet, you can do so by visiting this website. Please note that because of the torrent of traffic visiting the site, it may be unavailable for a while.

I was able to get one telephone number into the system then it sent me to an error page.

Good luck!

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Increase your website traffic with Jack of All Links – Social Search

On 05.22.08, In Search Engine Optimization, By John Rockefeller

If you’re looking for a good way to increase traffic to your website, increase your website’s search engine rankings, and increase your website’s Google PageRank then you need to take a look at Jack of All Links.

Jack of All Links is a social search engine developed earlier this year by me that allows webmasters and content producers to publicize their work and sites in a dynamic web directory (also known as a social search engine.) It’s very simple: You create your website, blog post, news article, or blog, copy the address URL and paste it in Jack of All Links. Then, your site will be listed immediately in our web directory, which is then searched and voted upon by our users.

The system has enjoyed success with almost zero marketing thus far and after some new features (messaging, bookmarking, among others) are launched this summer, it should really begin to pick up even more.

The idea originated while I was working on NetBoardz, which was a free forum hosting service I ran between December 2006 and January 2008. NetBoardz had a lot of users, but unless money waas going into advertising through programs like Yahoo Marketing and Google Adsense, the influx of new users would stop. Instead, I looked for free ways to create publicity for NetBoardz.

There were a number of options, but the one that stuck out was the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org). It seemed like such a good idea but done so poorly. With their service, you submit your site to a moderator, who is a member of the general public or may not even exist (as there are many more sites submitted and categories than people moderating) and who may actually be your competitor, and then hope that he or she adds your site to the listing.

Google and other search engines use dmoz.org extensively to create their search results, so it’s not entirely useless. But, at the time I was used to the instant feedback, Web 2.0 world. I wanted to know immediately if my site had been listed. After waiting more than 6 weeks, I finally found that my site had not been accepted.

“Why does this take so long?”, “Why can’t it be automatic and moderated by the community?”, “Why can’t I submit more than one page on my site to the service?” were questions I was asking. Finally I decided to begin developing the underlying architecture of my own web directory.

When you submit a site to Jack of All Links, it immediately appears in search results on the service as well as in the ever-changing Top 20 Links Leaderboard. In fact, Jack of All Links is aimed at not only becoming a large directory of sites put forth by the content creators or publishers, but in fact a full-fledged search engine that people will come to use daily, as all of the search results are rated and commented on by actual users. This is true, Web 2.0 user collaboration.

When you submit your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, or the Open Directory Project, they ask that you only submit the original address URL, and not each page. Then, they scan your site for each of your pages and determine the search engine keywords automatically. With Jack of All Links, you can submit as many pages as you want (it is recommended to submit everything your site has to offer – more pages = more opportunity for showing up at the top of search results), you can write your own description and keywords for each page, and those pages are voted on by the community. Indeed, Jack of All Links puts the power of controlling the listings in our search engine back in your hands as the content producer.

An added benefit of all of this is that the Search Engine Optimization for Jack of All Links is very strong, so as we increase in popularity, so do you. All of our search results and top links are displayed and scanned by major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, and others. Your links on Jack of All Links will show up in the Google search results, which will also bring you more traffic!

If you’d like to sign up at Jack of All Links and increase your site’s traffic today, registration is completely free. Register now.

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