Triune Designs Blog: Web Design, Development, & Marketing

David over at Web Ink Now wrote about his top five Twitter applications. He then challenged his readers to provide a list of their top Twitter apps.

So, here are my top Twitter applications.

Twhirl (for my Mac)
TweetDeck seems to be the choice of Twitter power users everywhere; I am not a power user.

After trying out a few different apps for my Mac (including TweetDeck), I finally chose Twhirl. Twhirl has all that I need in a nice clean interface. Twhirl allows me to have multiple accounts up at the same time so I can easily follow what is happening in my personal and business tweetstreams. I also like the Growl notifications, which allow me to follow along without having to to constantly switch over to see new tweets.

BirdFeed (for my iPhone)
I have tried five or six different Twitter apps for the iPhone. A while ago I read about BirdFeed on TechCrunch. They spoke highly about the new app so I thought I might give it a chance. I have been using Birdfeed ever since.

Birdfeed has a simple and clean interface, it allows me to easily see mentions/replies, and it provides easy access to retweeting or replying to other people’s tweets. Birdfeed also bookmarks my Twitter time line so I can easily refer back to a recent tweet I want to see. Finally, I like how the interface looks similar to the iPhone texting (or iChat conversations) interface.

Flickr (for sharing photos)
Flickr was a little late to the Twitter-picture game, but I am glad they are here. Facebook and Flickr are the two places I share my photos with the world. Since I am already adding my photos to Flickr, it makes things easy for me to reference my “photo” tweets through them instead of worrying about another website.

FriendOrFollow (for a bird’s eye view of my Twitter community)
FriendOrFollow easily allows me to keep track of my Twitter community. On their website, I have three options. I can see who is following me (with no love in return), who I am following (without reciprocation), and who are my friends (those who follow me and I follow back).

The benefit of using FriendOrFollow is that I have a better idea of who I am actually engaging with on Twitter. The information is used (in conjunction with other criteria) to allow me to make more informed decisions on who I should continue following.

Your Favs
There are my favorite Twitter apps, but I am more interested in you. What are your favorites?

Do you have a great post that you want the world to see for a while? Then let me introduce you to sticky post! Sticky post, meet reader. Reader, meet sticky post.

Your Normal Settings
In your default WordPress blog setting, every time you publish a new post the older ones get bumped down one notch. The newest post takes over the top slot and is the first one people see when visiting your blog. This keeps your blog clean and tidy in chronological order.

Being A Little Sticky
There are, however, times when you might want that special blog post to “stick” around for a while in the top slot. WordPress allows you to to do this in the visibility settings on the right side of your post editing page.

Here is what to do:

1. Find the publish area on the edit post page.
2. Find the visibility setting (see image below).
3. Click “edit” to the right of visibility.
4. Check “Stick this post to the front page” (see image below).
5. Click ok to save the change.

That is it. You have just allowed that awesome post to hang around for a while longer to bask in all its greatness.

Thanks to Noupe for highlighting this feature in WordPress 2.7. If you want more great tips and tricks to master WordPress check out their article.

Hotlinking (or inline linking) is defined as

the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.

Cite: What is hotlinking?

Reasons Why You Should Not Hotlink

• The website owner hosting the original image can change the image to anything they want and (aside from deleting it) you have no control over the image. What could happen is the person actually hosting the image changes that “awesome Twitter icon” you hotlinked to and it has now become offensive material.
• You run the risk of exposing your users to possible phishing attacks or cross-site scripting. Again, hotlinking leaves you and your users vulnerable to the image owner’s mercy.
• You are stealing the other person’s bandwidth. Each time the page with the inline-linked image is viewed, the image is pulled from the other person’s server and not yours. Therefore, you are using their resources for that image instead of of your own. It is the same as running an extension cord from my house to yours so you can use some of my electricity to power your house.

Here is my suggestion for using someone’s image the right way.

1. Make sure the picture can be used on your website.
2. If you may use their image, copy the photo and add/upload it to your own web host/server
3. Give credit where it is due and provide attribution.

This way, it is a win-win situation. You get to use an awesome photograph or image and use your own resources to show it. They get proper credit and link-juice to their own website.

Happy blogging!!

A couple of weeks ago the Charlotte Observer reported that a South Carolina

advertising agency… won $1.8 million in damages after suing an author of a blog – known for its harsh and sometimes crass criticism of elected officials, business leaders and local media – for defamation.

Man wins $1.8 million in suit against blogger

According to the Observer, court documents state that the blogger called the head of the ad agency a

“failed lawyer” and “criticized one of the firm’s advertising campaigns.”

Man wins $1.8 million in suit against blogger

I know that you will never encounter a problem like this because you are providing information that is helpful and informational for your readers, but a little reminder never hurts.

Always be mindful about how your blog posts impact others. A negative-slanted post might

• damage your company’s or your own reputation
• detract from your blog’s overall message
• take a little extra cash out of your wallet

Here’s to happy and helpful business blogging!

Web marketing is very similar to how you accumulate wealth. When done properly, both activities require discipline and time in order to grow and be successful.

This aspect of web marketing is its biggest hurdle and yet its biggest value. Why? It means that everyone cannot just swoop in, make a half-hearted effort and then subsequently succeed.

This gives small businesses owners, like us, leverage. If you are willing to commit your time and effort to steadily growing your online presence, over the long-term, it will begin to provide the results you are seeking.

Your Very Own Compound Interest
When dealing with savings, you add some money to your account on a regular basis. The interest then goes to work on your constantly-updated balance and increases your overall savings. Over a period of time, you will begin to see the realization of the compound interest.

Three factors determine your success: you adding money, the interest working on your balance, and time allowing the interest to build upon itself.

Your web marketing is very similar. When dealing with blogging, your job is to write frequent posts. Write posts that have good content and that do something for your audience. At first, one or two people will read your blog. As these few readers find interesting information on your blog, they will tell a friend or two. This process will continue upon itself, creating “compound audienceship.”

Similar to above, the key factors here are your effort (i.e. writing posts), your engaged audience telling others about something they read on your website, and time allowing the growing audience to build upon itself.

What You Can Do To Help Yourself
When dealing with savings accounts, there is not much you can do to help accelerate the growth. Mainly, you just try to find the best interest rate that will allow your money to grow a little faster. Luckily, there are a few things that you can do to help yourself out with blogging. None of these are quick fixes, but they will help your cause.

• Continue writing… do not stop.
• Engage your audience. Try to reply to their comments as much as possible.
• Read other people’s blogs and comment on them. Get involved in the community around you.
• Stay focused on your audience and write material that is oriented towards them.

If you want to read more about blogging being a long-term investment, check out my article relating blogging to a marathon.

The 3D Bar Graph Meeting image above is courtesy of lumaxart on Flickr. You can also find their work at thegoldguys.blogspot.com or lumaxart.com.

Last week I showed you some of Google’s recommendations on how not to optimize your website for being found on search engines. Now it is time to have some fun and learn what Google says about setting up your website the right way.

Google Says: “Get More Links”

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

Google’s Ranking Webmasters/Site Owners Help

How? Participate In Community
For many, a website is just an online business card. They just put some information on the site and then tell people to check it out for contact information and a quick egocentric bio. Unfortunately for those businesses they are missing out on the true power of the web: the community.

Here are a few suggestions on how to increase the number of incoming links. What you should notice is that most of the suggestions center around participating in the online community and building an online presence through active interaction.

• Create good content – Make the information on your website helpful, useful, and informative; entertaining; newsworthy; or funny. In other words, make the content on your website worth talking about.
• Read and comment – Read other people’s blogs and participate in their discussions. The web communities are not one-way streets and it is vital for you to be an active participant. The more you get involved, the more you will find people linking to your site/blog.
• Link to others – Again, the web is a two-way street. Link to other people’s or business’ web pages when you find something worth noting. Does someone have a particularly good blog post? Do they excel at a particular service or have a great product? Link to them. You will find that giving other people links becomes reciprocal over the long term.
• Give something away – People like free stuff… and people like to talk about getting cool, free stuff. Therefore, give something away. Whether it is an e-book or one of your products or services, give a little something away for free and people will want to talk about you and link to your website.
• Use Twitter – Have a good blog post on a particular day? Let the Twitter world know and throw it up on your Twitter feed.
• Add your post’s link on Facebook – This should be done a little more sparingly than Twitter. However, if you have a special article that is worth noting, post it on Facebook for all of your friends to see. Perhaps your friends will also find the post special and add a link themselves.

Remember, for small businesses like us, building links to your site is not about quick-fixes or schemes. It is about participating with those around you.

As a final thought before closing, here is Google’s own recommendation on how to build incoming links:

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

Google webmaster recommendations, emphasis added

Now, what are you waiting for? Go out there and get involved…

The Lucerne, Switzerland bridge photo is courtesy of Olivier Bruchez on Flickr.

My good friend, and excellent Charlotte, NC realtor, John Paul Soto and I were talking a few nights ago. A good discussion came up about how to get listed higher in Google’s rankings for various search terms. This conversation echoed many I have had with our clients over the years. In fact, I would probably rate this concern as our number one small business web marketing question.

Since it is always such a big question for small business owners I thought I might use a few blog posts to give you Google’s own advice for improving your own search engine rankings.

First, the what not to do. This will help you know where Google draws the line so you know what is recommended and what is not.

Your Own Litmus Test

Google provides a few rules of thumb to help you if you are ever left wondering what is right and what is wrong. Ask yourself these three guiding questions:

1. [Do you] feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you?
2. Does this help [your] users?
3. Would [you] do this if search engines didn’t exist?

The Recommendations

Here are some suggestions on what to avoid:

Google’s General Guidelines

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

From Google’s webmaster guidelines

Google’s Specific Guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

From Google’s webmaster guidelines

Check back later to read about Google’s recommendations for what you can do to help improve your rankings.

The “do not cross the line” photo is courtesy of Rob Gallop on Flickr