I don’t care who you are, or what it is you do. We all are marketers. Now, when you think of the dictionary definition or marketing, you think of a guy in a suit coming up with wacky ideas to sell invention X. This classic definition of a marketer doesn’t mean much in modern times. The internet has given us all the power to share our voices on a world wide stage, and to market everything from our websites, to our blogs, to our stores and more.
Tag Archives | popularity
Everyone is a Marketer
Better Twitter Search with Topsy
Twitter’s search tools might be nice, however it does not really leave me wanting more. Rather than it, I have turned towards Topsy. If you want to know what other people are tweeting about, sharing with friend or anything else this search engine is the best of the best.
Popularity Tools for Search Engine Optimization
Now, no matter if you believe search engine optimization is a bunch of horse hockey or a real science, there is no doubt that there are a lot of great tools built to help you check into your SEO needs.
Here are some of the Web’s best tools for checking online popularity.
- PRSearch.net Popularity Tools
- Webconfs.com – Backlink and Anchor Text Analyzer
- Uptime Bot
- Webmaster Toolkit’s Link Appeal
- LinkVendor.com’s Link Popularity and Site Analysis Tool
- MarketLeap.com Link Popularity Checker
- Link Popularity Tool from Iconinteractive
- Webmaster Toolkit’s Link Popularity Checker
Have another search engine optimization popularity checker to add to the list? Drop in a comment and share with the group!
Mitchelaneous : Followed by More than 600 Awesome People
Just wanted to share some exciting news this morning, Mitchelaneous has finally broken the 600 subscribers mark! I’ve been watching this one for a while, since I had been hovering in 580 subscribers to 590 subscribers for some time.
To check out every single post, be sure to check out the archives (all of them are on one single page!) It goes all the way back to an article that no longer exists anymore. Fun times, indeed. If you want to go WAY back in time – check out how things looked back in 2005!
Not old enough? Well happened to find a version from back in 2004 (the year the Mitchelaneous fun started here):
Want to help celebrate? Tell your friends, family and your neighbor’s dog they should be subscribing! Need some help?
Subscribe in a Reader! | Subscribe to Mitchelaneous by E-mail
You can also just copy and paste this into your feed reader of choice too:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/mitchelaneous
Thanks for following me for the past 4+ years! You are the awesome 600+ that keep me going day after day and I REALLY do appreciate it.
Don’t Be Afraid to Pimp Yourself on the Social Web
As I remove MySpace and add Plurk to my own Mitchelaneous side bar, I thought this would be as good of a time as any to bring up the fact that you should not be afraid to socialize and meet new people. Sure, some places build a fan following because of great content but great content alone can not win any popularity races.
You have to get out there and proverbially pimp your goods.
Let people know at least a few places where they can follow you or be your friend, and they are given a few more “gateways” to get back to your blog and content. Think of it this way, which am I more likely to be friends with:
- The guy who’s web site I never knew about because he doesn’t push it out in the real world
- The guy who is trying his best to make friends, and inform the public he’s out there and ready for his close up
I’m not afraid to mention anybody who wishes to can add me as a friend on:
Twitter | Facebook | Plurk | MySpace | Pownce | LinkedIn | Flickr
Don’t be afraid to promote your favorite social web site profiles. By not doing so, you are missing a good chance not only to make a few friends but get some free press for your own web site. Don’t be a wall flower, be that comfy chair everybody likes to sit on.
What to do When You Find Yourself Getting Popular
Looks like my post-Firefox 3 bump in stats is starting to come to an end for Firefox Facts. While the madness was going on (one post got up to 80+ comments!) I came up with a few tactics to try to milk the proverbial press cow as long as I could.
Watch where people are coming in. Via Google Analytics I was able to check out in nearly real time where people were coming in via search, blogs and other places and edit my content to meet the needs of the people.
Keep an eye on search phrases and the results they get. For example, if a lot of people were coming in for the phrase “firefox 3 themes” and the story they were getting was about the themes but didn’t give them much selection, I made sure I added a link to a post like this one that gave some new Firefox 3 ready themes for them to try.
Just some handy advice you might keep in mind for yourself next time you see your own web site going through a popularity surge.
Compare your RSS Subscription Numbers
This is a tool I think Google and/or FeedBurner would be smart to pick up as soon as possible. FeedCompare.com allows you to compare any two feed subscriptions to see how you stack up against the competition.
Above you can see the results of the Mitchelaneous RSS subscription feed numbers in comparison with my podcast, the Web Hosting Show. You can also drag over a specific time frame to zoom in on the results. Now lets see what happens when you compare the Web Hosting Show with The WHIR’s main daily news feed:
The Web Hosting Show is hanging in there – was actually surprised how close we were. Is this the part where I am suppose to beg you to go subscribe to the Web Hosting Show’s RSS feed so we can beat them? Ok, well you can – but it is all in good fun. As you can see, FeedCompare.com can be a lot of fun.
Link Popularity Checker
Want to see how popular you are on the Web? I recently found a pretty neat program that checks your popularity against some other web sites that you might be competing against for eyeballs out there on the Web. Link Popularity Check does an alright job and giving you the facts and figures you need.
Once you get Link Popularity Check installed, this is the type of readout they deliver to you:
The positive of this program is it gives you a nice visual representation of where you stand out there with some of your competitors. It searches Google, HotBot, AllTheWeb and MSN search. The downside is that you have to put up with some advertisements and be careful not to give your e-mail address to their “newsletter”. As you can see a lot of information there to comb through to find out what is working and what you might need to work on.
How Much Does Popularity Cost?
There is no doubt that the two “easy ways out” when it comes to Web popularity – you either know somebody famous that mentions your service or you. The second way would be to pay lots and lots of money on advertising. Other than that, building a “successful” brand on your own is really hard.
The main problem we suffer is that a lot of folks only focus on following the big voices Online. If somebody like Robert Scoble, Kevin Rose or Leo Laporte don’t mention it, use it, or give it a thumbs up you are dead to a lot of the world. That is not their fault, they are just folks Online as well that just happened to get lucky and gain a real voice out there in the geeky world we live in.
Firefox Facts gain most of its popularity because Chris Pirillo really helped inspire and lead me into the entire project from day one. So I have gotten a perk out of this type of popular voices driving the popular vote.
I’ve recently been actually spending money in promoting the Web Hosting Show in new audiences and I have to say it has been paying off a little ‘bit. Most of my projects are done as a hobby though – so not sure if I can count myself.
I do feel sorry for folks out there trying to build a business from the ground up because if your not on the A-list or know somebody on the A-list it is almost impossible to “make it”.
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