Social Media Mavens / Experts

Todays viral post is going to be a little different, but I wanted to share a few tips for going viral that have been on my mind this week, so here goes:

#1 Think about the audience - You need to research out the group of people you will be targeting, and the social communities they use. There are a ton of targeted social networks out there, but trying to get on them all with one post is just plain silly. Angling Masters is one of the biggest social networks for fishermen, but probably not the best place for a viral piece about fashion disasters. If you know you can create a viral piece about going Green, or something to help the environment then finding the social communities for eco-friendly stories is what you want to be looking for. Go and check out the stories that are popular, or that have made it popular in the past. Find the ones that have received the most votes, and research out the titles, content and exactly just what made them go “viral”.

#2 Create Amazing Content For Actual Readers - Don’t just think $Dollar$ signs when creating a content piece you want to go viral. The truth of the matter is very little stories that go viral actually make people any money. Especially the ones that go viral on some of the bigger communities that are out there like Digg, Reddit or Delicious. How you benefit is from exposure, and the links that will be built up over the months and years. I have stories that made the front page of Digg years ago that still get new links every week, and I still see traffic from every single day. Thats right - EVERY SINGLE DAY! Why? The content is worth reading, and content worth reading is worth sharing and sharing again.

#3 Think Like A Viral Marketer - Now when you get good at this, it will scare you. You will be doing normal everyday stuff and think to yourself - “That could make a good viral post”! Sometimes its even sickening … The other day I was driving and right in front of me (I am talking RIGHT in front of me) a HUGE car crash … someone blew threw a stop sign and t-boned a truck toeing a trailer, and that truck started spinning right towards me. The first thing I thought of? Get my iPhone out and take a picture, and my second thought was that I wish I had a camera to capture that because one of my clients is in the Trucking safety industry, and there has got to be something I could use that video on!!! Then the ideas started flowing - “10 of the Craziest crashes ever caught on video” or “10 Of The Craziest Crashes Ever Filmed By An Amatuer”. You get the point - my mind is sick and wrong. Its funny because even the simple everyday interactions with my kids - I have a never ending supply of viral posts because of all the funny stuff they do for anyone in a kids industry!

#4 Networking - It is one thing to just become a “member” of a social network and vote on stuff, but if you can truly understand the point of the community, become a good active member of it, and contribute to it, you will see amazing results. Make friends, vote on their stuff, share it with others of every single network you are a part of, and in turn they will do the same for you. Just today I saw a post of mine show up on another targeted social network for women from a person I made friends with about a month ago. It all does come back, so don’t be greedy with your time or participation.

#5 Have Fun - If you can’t have fun, or make fun of yourself and what you are doing then you have no place in the social networks. People who thrive in the social communities and have stuff go viral all the time are the ones that love what they do. They live, eat, breathe, and drink social media. I am not saying you have to become that crazy, but if you love what you are doing, then you will become good at it. If you are new to social networking my biggest piece of advice would be to have fun, make friends, contribute to the community and enjoy the networks that you are a part of! You will see it pay off in the end!

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Social media websites have changed the way people discover new media and there are many websites out there that use some sort of social media format so my criticisms are not directed at all of the sites, however one of the supposedly leading social media sites is Digg.com which I believe has many shortcomings and rather than being a place where diverse points of view are expressed it is looking more and more like a site full of marketing hype and political plugs.

Having been turned off by Digg (although I admit to still submitting some articles there in hopes that there are still a few real users there who may be interested in my content) I have begun to look at other social media websites such as Reddit.com, Propeller and Mixx. Something that these sites have in common compared to Digg is that they have markedly lower vote counts for the stories that make the front page of the site. This is because, unlike Digg, these sites don’t provide a conducive environment to inflating vote counts. Digg is set up in such a way that users on the site add friends and send “shouts” to one another to digg stories.

On the surface this system of sending messages to users who may find your content to be interesting makes sense but in practice it leads to “power users” on the site (who I am guessing are paid to do this sort of work by someone else) that spend their time trolling lists of users and adding and removing friends to achieve the perfect combination of users who are most likely to digg their stories, often exchanging the digging of their stories in return.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look through the Digg “Popular” pages and you will see an abundance of Apple and Ipod themed articles as well as numerous articles about the U.S. political elections. I find it very odd that a large company with a large advertising budget such as Apple and politicians who are essentially trying to buy votes find their way to the front page so often of what is touted as being a next generation user supported social media site. To me Digg is starting to look a lot like MSN.com or any other similar generic news website out there.

The friend and voting systems on the other social media websites seem to be less conducive to this sort of thing which I believe leads to the lower vote counts on these sites for top stories rather than that they necessarily have a smaller number of active users. If you want to test what I have said for yourself, create an account on Digg and go through and add a few hundred friends to your profile, be sure to add a few of the users who are submitting the articles that are making the Digg front page. After not long you will be bombarded by “shout spam” which is literally a torrent of your “friends” asking you to Digg their worthless articles.

I wonder if the owners of Digg are aware of this and choose to do nothing or if they are actively working on a solution to this issue. Regardless, I encourage those who have a genuine interest in social media to broaden their search as there are a lot of sites out there to try and you may find yourself not missing Digg after long if you find another site you like. I still believe that this is an issue that plagues the majority of social media websites but at least it seems some of the sites are taking measures to reduce this problem and hopefully at some point we will see it eliminated. All that I know for now is that you can put your vote in by using the sites that don’t encourage this and shunning those that do as sites like Digg.com will eventually have to straighten out if they expect to continue to receive large volumes of traffic.

Internet cafes can be dangerous places. Here’s how to keep your information safe.

Whether sending email, uploading photos, booking flights and hotels, paying the bills back home, and checking the status of a bank account, travelers use the internet for a huge variety of tasks.

The ubiquity of internet cafes around the world has made this convenience possible.

Sitting down at an internet cafe has become so common in the life of travelers that few stop to consider the security of these very public computers.

But if we do stop to think about it, internet cafe computers (and any information you send or access from them) are clearly vulnerable. Fortunately, protecting yourself is not very difficult.

Here are some things you can do to keep your data safe:

1. Get Portable Firefox

The first step to securing your internet connection, is securing your browser. The best way to do this is to install Portable Firefox on a USB thumb drive.

When you sit down at the computer, plug in the thumb drive and start your own version of Firefox from there. As you will see, this small piece of gear is really a necessity for any traveler planning to use public computers.

2. Connect Securely

Once you have your own version of Firefox up and running on the cafe’s computer, it is time to connect to the internet. To ensure your online safety, it is imperative that you use a secure connection when accessing sensitive sites.

In most cases, when Firefox makes a secure connection a closed padlock appears in the right hand side of the address bar.

If you don’t see this icon, try retyping the address using “https” instead of “http.” In this case “s” means that you are using a special, secure, encrypted connection to the site.

If you always forget to include the “s” try bookmarking the secure site and using that link instead of typing in an address. If you are using a USB drive with your own Firefox browser, these bookmarks will be available anywhere you go.

Alternately, try using this special script with Firefox, which automatically inserts the “s” into preselected site addresses.

3. Confuse the Keyloggers

Once you have established a secure connection, it is time to log in. Thanks to the use of “https” it is significantly more difficult, if not impossible, for people ‘looking in’ on the connection from other computers to steal your data.

Photo by KingJeng.net

That said, the secure connection does not prevent a program on the computer you are using from recording everything you type. These programs, called “keyloggers” are especially dangerous when typing things like login names, passwords, and passport and credit card numbers.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do.

First, by using bookmarks saved in your portable Firefox browser to connect to sensitive sites, instead of manually typing in the addresses, you eliminate the common method keyloggers use to index data. This makes it much more difficult to assign, for example, a password with a specific email site.

A simple trick that will fool most keyloggers is to disguise your password in a sea of “dummy characters.”

To do this click the password box and type the first character of your password. Next click anywhere else on the page to deselect the password box, and type some random characters before reselecting the password box and entering the second character.

Repeat this process for each character of your password.

This works because most keylogging programs cannot distinguish random typing from typing in a specific field on a web page. For a more complete explanation of this technique, read the short PDF report of a study testing it conducted by Microsoft, and this discussion that followed.

If you frequent some really questionable internet cafes and you want the best defense against keyloggers, than PasswordMaker is the answer. This program produces passwords that are very difficult to crack and is available as a add-on for your Firefox browser.

4. Use Encryption

No matter how well you have planned your trip, sometimes there is business that cannot be done remotely. When this happens, travelers are often forced to send sensitive private information to a trusted friend or family member.

If you are in a situation where you must email credit card, pin, social security, or passport numbers, using encrypted email is a very good idea.

Email encryption codes your message so that it is indecipherable. A special key is created that can be used to unlock the coded message. The easiest way to send encrypted email is via Gmail Encryption a script that is, obviously, specific to Google’s free email service.

If you don’t like Gmail, the Encrypt This! add-on for Firefox will easily encrypt any text in your browser.

5. Don’t Get Caught by a Phisher

Phishing scams involve decoy websites or emails that mimic an official one. When you enter your information into the fraudulent site, it is sent to a third party. Carefully checking the address of websites you visit is the best defense against these scams.

Firefox also comes with some built in protection. To enable it, go to the Tools menu and select Options. Under the Security tab, check the box next to “Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected forgery” and select the option to “ask Google.”

For a little extra protection, there are several add-ons for Firefox that will make you even safer against phishers.

The Internet, especially when accessed from a public computer or internet cafe, is a dangerous place for your private data.

Fortunately, with a little preparation and care we can surf along without a problem. With precautions in place, you can worry less about your time online, and focus on enjoying your travels.

What tips do you have for traveler’s internet security? Share your own tips in the comments!

Yahoo Buzz, a more elementary competitor to Digg and other vote-based link aggregation and promotion engines of similar ilk, has showed be quite popular in the months following its February debut. Though Yahoo has been criticized for failing to provide a more collaborative, social structure with the service - which remains in beta, we should add - it has proven to be an immense boost to a select supply of publishers. Yahoo notes sites like HowStuffWorks and RollingStone as the recipients of millions of page views.

Today the company is adding to the functions of Yahoo Buzz, introducing a widget-generation utility which website publishers can use to embed on pages to showcase stories listed on Buzz, whether they be general items or specific to categories, like sports, business, or science and technology. Yahoo has also established RSS feeds for top stories as well as individual categories.

As for improvements made to the main site structure, Yahoo has a few new inclusions, one being a simple “First Buzzed By” tag in which it designates a particular Buzz user with submitting said link or story, and another being the option for users to roam their personal voting histories.

May 1, 2008 — 09:17 AM PDT — by Paul Glazowski

Posted by rebecca on Wed (4/30/0 at 10:18 AM