Technical Tidbits™

My technology strategies for reigning in information overload on Twitter! Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Lacy, Author of “Twitter Marketing for Dummies” and co-founder and CEO of social media consulting and training firm Brandswag,  gave us a full hour of outstanding tips for using social media as a marketing tool!

And it’s official! Kyle Lacy acknowledged publicly that I am too nice of a person! (SMILE) While that’s some what of an honor to be told that, it’s definitely not a plus when you’re trying to market yourself! (But this also gave me a great idea for an upcoming show topic! How to write for yourself about yourself! And we have the guest scheduled for that!)

Here are some of the highlights in case you didn’t take notes or missed the show!

The guidelines for tweets:

• For every 6 tweets you put out, 4 should be retweets of your followers, 1 of your own (can be promotional) and 1 tweet about your industry.
• Never synch all your accounts. (My bad!) Always have different content for each type of account. (To learn more about the types of twitter accounts listen to the replay!)
• Dedicate 30 minutes a day to all social networking sites.
• Don’t auto DM! Kyle did share the perfect auto DM on the show to illustrate the exception!
• Use tools like Hootesuite, Tweetdeck, or Cotweet (corporate).
• DO NOT synch your FB & Twitter accounts. (To find out why, listen to the show!)

The 5 Tips that Kyle shared on the show for effective social network marketing:

1. Listening – Listen to your clients, competitors, and the industry you’re in.
2. Content & Stories – Provide valuable, related content and stories about your business.
3. Following & Tracking – Follow and track your clients, competitors, and industry in social networks.
4. Building Fans – Use tools like twit greater, klout, and other such tools to find people with klout – influencers – in your industry. After you’ve established a relationship with them, it’s ok to DM them and ask them to retweet an important message for you.
5. Be genuine and authentic!

Hear the Replay! Technical Tidbits on BlogTalk Radio

Advertising Disclaimer: Please note that BlogTalk Radio puts ads in the show archives which is why we are looking for a sponsor to upgrade our account. I DO NOT recommend the current advertising that is unfortunately being broadcast from the beginning of the show!

See larger image Twitter Marketing For Dummies (Paperback) By (author) Kyle Lacy List Price: $24.99 USD New From: $6.96 In Stock Used from: $9.25 In Stock

It started off with the BlogTalk radio show with Joe Scott from PhatomAlert.com: Beat Big Brother to the Stoplight.  The information Joe gave me was disturbing and upsetting.

But then, Cracked publishes this:  5 Ways You’re Secretly Being Monitored | Cracked.com.

And then there’s TruTV’s Jessie Venture and Conspiracy Theory episode on Big Brother (see video below).

And well, I really don’t know what to say anymore.

The Cracked article points you to the website for Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) which sounds pretty harmless and benign. But there, in plain site was the study about CCTV in buses in Chicago and other transit authorities.

The page I landed on stated:

In Chicago, Illinois, on-board transit surveillance systems were installed on 322 buses. Multiple cameras were installed on the interior of each bus to ensure complete coverage, and digital event recorders were used to securely capture video, audio, and sensor data. In 1998, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) reported the total cost of installation was $3.1 million.

Did you read that thoroughly? VIDEO, AUDIO, AND SENSOR DATA.

Maybe you might want to think twice about using your cell phone on the bus, train, elevator, ummmm – anywhere?!

Recently, I ran across an article on Yahoo News about the FBI and other government agencies setting up fake profiles on social networking sites!

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting. (Yahoo News | Break the law and your new ‘friend’ may be the FBI)

Do you think it’s working? It is in Italy!

The BBC recently reported in their article, “Facebook traps Italian fugitive mafia suspect” that,

Italian police have used social networking site Facebook to track down and capture one of the country’s most-wanted fugitive mafia suspects.

And in a recent newsletter article (subscribe top right!), I reported how a Police detective used a fugitive’s addiction to World of Warcraft to find him by locating his IP address when he was playing the game online.

Am I becoming one of those “conspiracy theorists?” No, because I don’t believe this is a theory anymore. The government and its agencies along with the hacker’s, the ghostnet, and the online underground economy are in plain sight and open about what they do! It’s a fact.

And for any of you nay-sayers who think governments aren’t capable of conspiracy, I ask that you watch the PBS special with Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. called: Faces of America. I used to think that governments were inept at doing “conspiracy-type” projects until I saw a totally unrelated item on this series.  I believe it was the in the second episode where Gates presents an old document to show the passage of an ancestor from Ireland to the United States.  In that document was an accounting of how much food was being exported from Ireland by the government during the time peasants were starving from the potato famine! It was very obvious the government wanted to get rid of the peasant population one way or another – either starvation or shipping them to the new world. Either way, it was proof positive for me!

So again, are you secretly being monitored? No! You are OPENLY BEING MONITORED!