Glowleaf

I know every webmaster likes to put those social bookmarking buttons on his sites. Some overdo it, others make it work and get like 200 tweets and 500 facebook shares. I honestly haven’t cracked that shell yet, I don’t know how to make something that popular. What I do know on the other hand, is that “Like” works better than facebook share.

It looks like this:

and you can get it from the Facebook developer pages here. Customize it the way you want it and voila! It is ready to get slapped in your pages.

I love this little piece of code for many reasons.

1. It is minimal, and it fits every website. You cannot possibly argue with your designer about integrating this widget. I mean, come on. Even the background is transparent.
2. It shows pictures of people’s friends. I can’t even begin to talk about how awesome that is. Instead of those ugly boxes for facebook pages that show a bunch of strangers, this widget shows the users friends faces. People just want to click it.
3. It shows a count of people who liked this. Crowd mentality here, if people see that 100 others liked it, they will like it too.
4. The code geolocates to the user’s native language setting on facebook. Yea, awesome.
5. Facebook has made the “Like” feature a reflex to all casual facebook users. Put the code in the right position and visitors will like it on autopilot.
6. It actually brings traffic.
7. Sneezers (see Seth Godin) who like your page are going to bring their pack. And a pack’s interests are usually common amongst its members.
8. It is a one click deal. Even though Facebook share is optimized to the heavens for fast sharing of internet goodyness, it is still 2-3 clicks too long. This little baby is ONE CLICK. ONE.

Seriously, just try it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: facebook developers, facebook like, facebook share

Namedrive just let me in on the Beta of  Fastpage, which is a glorified way of saying “autosites”.

In the beta, you just switch a few domains from your standard parked domain portfolio over to Fastpark. You add their keywords and categories, as normal. And then you hit “publish”.

After a few minutes, the autosites go live and you can edit them and custom tailor them to what you want.

Here is a screenshot of the beta editing interface:

As you can clearly see from the screenshot (you have to click it, duh…), you can easily and quickly change colours, columns, widgets etc. On the optimize button you can add meta data for better seo.

The current widgets are fine by themselves:

• Text adds a text box that you specify, just like in wordpress
• Blog entries does not seem to work yet
• Image uploads an image from your drive
• Widget is for custom widgets, i.e. amazon?
• Affiliate code is where you put your affiliate codes directly in the page
• Bookmark just adds the well known widget bookmark everything
• CPC ads puts a box that pulls ads like Adsense
• Chat room adds a “room” with javascript IRC goodyness.
• News pulls news articles based on a keyword you specify.
• Photos adds photos from the web based on a keyword you specify.
• RSS feed is, yes! An RSS feed you specify. Propably the most powerful feature. You can put your own site’s feeds, or product feeds with affiliate codes, or whatever.
• Search box adds a redundant search box. There is another one on top.
• Full page widgets are very powerful, they are filled with pictures and article snippets and even ads. A single one of them makes the site look like a real one. Currently, there are only a few choices but this is still beta. The themes are Lottery, Horoscope, entertainment, stocks, swimsuit models (yes, babes), recipes, soccer, mortgages, MPG ratings,  sudoku (!), flight tracking, fitness videos. They are great so far, and I am sure that upon Fastpage’s launch there will be enough to feed the world.
• Flights shows up a flights search box, with aff links. You get a part of the payout.
• Hotels, same as above.
• Jobs shows job listings, you can put in a keyword, or leave it black and let it geolocate. Yup, awesome.
• Local directory, same as above.
• Products (affiliate) pulls product feeds based on keyword, with per sale commission where as,
• Products (CPC) does the same, but you earn per click. Pretty good if you ask me.
• And finally property listings pulls data based on zip code, or if left black it geolocates.

It generally is an awesome feature, but still in the early days of beta. The interface is simple yet powerful, and it enables you to manage, optimize and monetize a large portfolio of parked domains. Especially Fastpage is a true example of set-it-and-forget-it, you do the work once, you let it work forever.

It is still early to judge results, but I suggest that you add the RSS feeds to your fastpages so that they remain fresh to the bots.

Click this to Signup at Namedrive.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: fastpage, minisites, namedrive, parked domains, site creation

Using social media is a one-way street in today’s internet. What used to be a passing fad 2 years ago is now a serious marketing platform.

It depends on your site/product/service of course, but social media can push serious traffic towards you.

Facebook.

By hitting the 300 million milestone, Facebook is now a huge platform. Have you ever dreamt as a marketer “what if I could reach out a whole country? That would be awesome.”

Well, now you can. Facebook has the biggest userbase in the world. What used to be a fad, is now a must. The smart thing that facebook did was the notifications. A friend of yours signs up on Facebook? You get notified, because it parsed his email list. Someone added you as a friend? You get emailed. Someone tagged you on a photograph? The same. Someone replied on that comment on a photograph? Spam, spam spam. And the funny thing is, that it is never treated as spam. Facebook just lets you know that other people are doing stuff on your account. And since those people are your friends, you never get offended if they keep spamming you with sheep and mafia guns. Facebook is just the messenger.

Twitter.

Twitter must be the biggest fad of them all. Many have fought it and then fell in love with it. Even I did. In fact, it is so great, that its traffic must be the most valuable of them all. Twitter traffic comments on your posts, subscribes on your RSS and email list, blogs about you, retweets your tweets etc. You might not be able to directly sell something on twitter, but you are bound to get some exposure. And if your promo is worth it, that exposure will convert indirectly.

I think that twitter nailed it with the 140 word limit. People get spammed all day, every day, around the world. Ads, radio, phone calls, SMS, emails, billboards, leaflets, a whole blizzard of little spammy messages are fighting each other for your attention. And researches show that the average attention span of a person has been reduced significantly the last few years. Twitter fits that lifestyle perfectly. The way I see it, it is even better than RSS feeds. I used to go through my subscribed RSS blogs every few days, and had to read to whole posts etc. Now, I just have a twitter account, follow those people who interest me, and receive manageable chunks of info from them every day. It is a mashup of little shouts, and they stay non-intrusive because I chose to receive them!

Myspace.

Don’t neglect Myspace. Yea, its old. Yea, it sucks. But there are a lot of people on it. And the best part is, a lot of stupid people. People to whom you can sell stuff.

Ok then, how can we leverage these 3 social sites easily and effectively?

There is a little piece of software that does all that. It is called tweetdeck, and it rocks. It started out as a more useful GUI for multiple twitter accounts, but the newest version bridges Myspace and Facebook as well. I believe it is a marketer’s wet dream.

Once you set it up, you can manage each of your site’s social exposure on 3 social networks from the same interface. Lets say you have your personal blog, so you make accounts for it at Myspace, Facebook and twitter. You pass everything into tweetdeck, and voila, you can post and manage them from one location. Want to promote your service? 3 more accounts, set them up in Tweetdeck, and you can go back and forth between them all day inside tweetdeck.

Of course, setting up the accounts is an important step. Different social sites need different approaches to succeed in getting lots of victi… cough, sorry, friends.

Honestly, for Myspace I have no idea what to do to make an account popular. Google it, someone will know.

For facebook, I found this useful article on Mashable amongst the enormous pile of crap on that domain.

For twitter, a lot has been said, but it is all bloated bullshit. What you need to know is this: link periodically to interesting stuff in your niche. That is all, honestly. Either do it manually or automate it. An easy way to do this is to fire up tweetdeck (I told you it rocks!) and open a search tab. As a keyword put something in your niche, for example #php or #wordpress or #lol. Spend exactly 40 seconds every day, check that tab on tweetdeck, and retweet something that looks even remotely interesting, you don’t even have to click the bit.ly

Of course it is not as easy as it sounds. Creating a following through social media takes time, and there is no secret recipe for it. What is certain is that it does help your site, and it does help get exposure.

Now, what should you promote? Not everything works when you promote to the social crowd. Think about building/promoting:

• Viral content
• Video
• Interaction/Flash promo
• Polls
• Contests
• Interesting articles

How can you twist the above into sales? Well, that is for you to find out! It is different for every product, but there is always an angle of approach you can take to twist linkbait/socialbait into buying.  Use your imagination, and keep an eye open for what other marketers are doing on the same platforms.

Signup on my mailing list if you want juicier stuff than this.

Popularity: 3% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: facebook, myspace, social media, tweetdeck, twitter

Here is how to add a sitemap to Phpfox.

First of all, you will need a script that is now paid, but my version is an old free one. I have it available for download here, the sitemap generator.

Just unzip the file and add the generator folder as it is on your root, so that you have yoursite.com/generator

This script can actually generate sitemaps for any engine, so you can use this for other engines as quirky as Phpfox. Its installation instructions are pretty straightforward, follow those, but you will need a few hacks as well.

You will need notepad++ to edit the .htaccess file. Please note that the .htaccess usually cannot be seen from most ftp clients, you will have to get it from your host’s file manager. If you can’t find notepad++, here is a download page.

Now, all you need to do is add exceptions to the htaccess so that, one, you can access the xml generator script and two, so the sitemap.xml is accessible.

Open the .htaccess with notepad++, and add these 2 lines of code:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/generator/.*

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/sitemap.xml

to the first batch of commands, and again the same two lines on the second batch of commands. Save as .htaccess, and upload. Then you navigate to www.yoursite.com/generator/index.php and configure the script.

After you set it to spider your site and the sitemap is generated, you can submit it to google.

Popularity: 3% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: htaccess, notepad++, phpfox, sitemap generator, xml sitemap

There is a stupidly easy way to push your pages on twitter.

First of all, you will need to find a site that has some authority, but has no twitter presence. It sounds rare, but there are actually sites like that.

Create a twitter account for that site, as if it were your own, but do not claim that it is. In other words, use the same colors, the background, put the host’s url etc.

Now, go to twitterfeed and add your parasite. Add the host’s rss feeds to the loop, and also add your injection rss.

Do your usual twitter cycle for followers. If you don’t know how, here is a tool that rocks. Focus on getting followers in the host’s niche. As soon as you get to 500+ followers, start posting your links in the injection RSS feed (I suggest you use a new wordpress installation for that). It depends on the niche and your chosen host, but you can either promote your posts, niche offers, niche products or plain dating ads.

See? Easy peasy.

Popularity: 5% [?]

written by Glowleaf