Yes, the long silence interrupted by bursts of noise continues!

So what is the latest news?

Be A Magpie

I recently got a warning from BeAMagpie that my account was temporarily de-activated because it had too many automated feeds going to it (the apparent limit is 15%) and my percentage was closer to 90%  so I was in breach.

I have read the BeAMagpie Terms and Conditions and I say, fair deal – it quite clearly stipulates in the Terms and Conditions that merely reproduces other sources does not qualify as participation in their network.

But what happens if I am sending RSS feeds from my own site through a feed aggregator (such as Twitterfeed), how does BeAMagpie work this out – or do I need to send separate posts out? Can I use other syndication tools such as Ping.fm (I guess so).

How to Cope if Magpie Pushes You Out of the Nest

So BeAMagpie pushes you out of the nest? What can you do?

• comply to their terms and conditions: reduce automated Tweets to only 15% of your total Tweet traffic. Cut back your Twitterfeed, put your own posts in, Retweet people you are following (share the tweet love)

• continue with your old habits: this depends on your reason for creating the Twitter account, is it to create followers with the intention of re-directing to your own website one day? Is BeAMagpie a bit of opportunism while you build the list up? If so, maybe you should hold your course (although maybe you could do BeAMagpie a courtesy and deactivate your account – up to you)

• try a new strategy: BeAMagpie is one monetization strategy but it’s not the only one. Your most valuable possession is not your BeAMagpie account (with all due respect to the folks at BeAMagpie.com), it’s a list of followers who click on links you send them…it’s your list. So why not send other monetizing links instead.

You have options.

The people that fail are the ones who let failure stop them. The ones who succeed spend time finding another route to their goal.

To Advance, you need to ReTweet!

Okay,that was awful so apologies to start but I want to finish by mentioning the value of retweet and more to the point getting retweeted.

Why is this important?

ReTweets are Referrals

Simply because a retweet introduces you to (at least) one more level of followers (check out a tool like Twinfluence for an idea about how many more contacts this creates). More to the point, it can have the same weight as a personal referral because, after all a retweet is like a recommendation from one person to his or her followers.

How do you get retweeted?

Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com  (if you only follow one site on social media, follow this one) summarised some research done by Dan Zarella’s , and this is a great place to get started to find retweeting tips. To summarise a few of his keypoints:

• include links in your tweets (just over 56% of retweets contained links)
• try to offer new information
• it’s not about you (people won’t retweet that you had breakfast – unless of course, an alien abduction followed)

For more on Dan Zarella’s research check out his blog post in Mashable on  Twitter retweets

Seriously, if social media is your thing – check out Mashable

Okay, that’s it for me today – going to work on my Aussie Rob stuff now.

PS

TR.IM

Tr.im is back – for those of you who thought it was gone, like me. It was just a temporary interruption in service:  a victim of mistaken identity, their hosting service thought they were spammers rather than being a tool of spammers and hey, if that was a reason for denial of service, Twitter would have died and come back so many times it would have a redirect at www.lazarus.com, but all is well and good now.

The story is all in their blog if you are interested.

Okay, so I am a little late to this party – but it’s still going and the music is great. I was introduced to Tr.im by Sean Rasmussen and think it is an excellent piece of tracking and url shortening technology.

Especially useful for your affiliate links (especially when you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your site or your aren’t using a site – eg Twitter tweets or links on say, free classified ads.

By the way, if you still like bit.ly stick with it – it’s cool too.

How come so many good things happy in the shower? (Unless you re a dog of course – in which case, apologies but thanks for reading)

A Sample of Ideas

• How come people sing better in showers?
• How to stay control in the sea of hype that are sales events.
• Putting the marketing into internet marketing.
• Is there a need for a shower notebook (I mean pencil and paper not some new product from DELL or Apple)?

Digression – Are Dell and Apple the only computer companies in the world?

It has come to my attention as an occasional television watcher (science fiction, action, historical, documentary, drama – okay so I have catholic (with a small c) tastes) that the only computer companies in the world (okay television and movie world – but this is a big world especially after 6 pm)  are either Dells or Apples.  Maybe I am just more aware because I own a Dell and a Mac. Or maybe this is evidence of a careful product placement strategy. The two messages – Dell is everywhere and Apple is hip – most of the teen shows (I was surfing okay, yeah and it was a small sample) seem to use Apples and the trendy characters carry Macs or Mac book pros.

Excellent strategy Mike and Steve but it makes you wonder are the Skynet computers Apple or Dell…

Finally news for the Dogs!

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