Who isn’t tired of the “Johnny Come Lately” type of Internet marketers who put hype over substance? These are the creeps who give Internet marketing a bad name. Sadly, many people who encounter the “Johnny Come Lately” Internet marketer come to believe that Internet marketing just doesn’t work.
If Johnny is convincing, he will take enough of his victim’s money that they often become too cynical or cannot afford to fix what Johnny broke. Worse yet, Johnny may hurt their reputation and get their Websites penalized in Google and other search engines.
When you think Internet marketing comes with a high price tag, just consider what happens when you go with Johnny Come Lately.
Johnny Come Lately is back with a remix. I am just having a little fun at the expense of those who pee in my industry pool. I hope you enjoy the video!
Have You Met Johnny?
Please share your thoughts or any encounters you have had with Johnny Come Lately Internet marketers. I appreciate your comments!
You hate spam, I hate spam … we all hate spam. Right?
I spend a lot of time reading, researching, and finding out about stuff. I like knowing things. While I am reading, learning, and soaking in the glory of this Information Superhighway we have all built together, I encounter a lot of spam. Don’t we all?
We all want it to feel like a global community and we all want to know more about people, things, places and more. We find out how different we are, and we find out how similar we are. We find out what others like, and we find out things they don’t like. Sometimes we mix it up and forget that while we are so vigilant about not hearing the stuff we don’t want to hear (spam), we may miss a few things we do want to hear.
People love to talk about themselves. People with kids love to talk about their kids. People who love food love to talk about the great cuisine they just enjoyed. People with something to sell love to talk about their goods.
We each have a lot to say, and when we can connect it all with a worldwide crowd, it validates us. It makes us feel less alone. It makes us HUMAN!
I have always been careful to discourage a bunch of spam on my blog comments. I want real comments that people will find useful and will build a conversation. At the same time, I have to question what I may be missing.
I wrote a post once upon a time asking for people to share their Twitter usernames. It was titled “Twitter Username Selection: What’s in a Name?” It turned out that even with over 160 comments, it was not entirely a spamfest, but also allowed people to share who they are. It allowed people to talk about themselves. It also allowed and encouraged people to connect.
That is what I am offering now, but in a different way. I want to ask each of you … yes, YOU, to share a little about yourself. What do you like? What are you all about? What do you do for a living? Do you have something to sell? Share it with people here, because you never know whom you may connect with.
Hey, what can be the worst outcome? We have to sort through a little bit of junk to find the prize? They do that at diamond mines, too.
This is my call for spam. Place your spam here. When I say spam, in this case I mean to not be afraid to talk about yourself … I don’t mean to offer your free diplomas or cheap Rolex watches. I mean, connect, share, and don’t be afraid to drop a link or sell us some stuff. As long as it is in good taste, let it fly. This is a mixer, so by all means, MIX!
NOTE: If you are wondering how or if I will moderate this … Yes, I will probably have to shut the comments off at some point or begin some manual moderation. Big deal, I can handle it. As long as it sounds genuine and is not illegal, go ahead and share it with the rest of us!
By the way … aren’t you curious what people will say when they are actually requested to talk about themselves? Be sure to subscribe to the comments!
UPDATE: Take a look at the things we may miss when we become too cynical. There are some really talented and amazing people in this world, and right here in the blog comments! Let us all be sure that we each stop and smell the flowers.
Tynt content tracking has some great uses and is extremely simple to implement. I just cannot figure out why more people are not using it. My guess is that they will!
I am a fan of knowledge. I love to know things, and this is especially true when it comes to Websites. I use a lot of tools to track what people are doing on my sites. I use Google Analytics (of course), and I love Clicky Web Analytics because I like to watch what people are doing on my site in real time (yes, I see you there, reading and copying stuff). I use BackType and Disqus, and many other great applications to keep a finger on the pulse of what is around me. Of course, not the least of these is Twitter.
What is Tynt and How Can it Help Track Content?
Today I want to share a handy tool called Tynt. What is it? It is really very simple. It helps to track content that is copied from your Website. People copy and paste things from Websites all the time. It is often just to share it with others in an email message, their Facebook, or on their blog. For the most part, it is a really great thing, and often innocent rather than theft of your content.
Tynt makes it easier to not only know what they are copying, but also to help them provide attribution. When they copy something from your site, it will automatically add additional information that you specify to their clipboard. In my case, I just have it add the page title and the Web address for where they found it. However, you can also add additional information, such as Creative Commons Licensing, an advertisement, or some other greeting.
It does not stop there. Tynt also reports back to you with what was copied and statistics on the copied content. You can choose to receive emailed reports, and you can even have it automatically post the most popular text copied from your Website to your Twitter account!
It is still simple for somebody to delete the additional information, so it is not really for thwarting content theft. There are other great tools for that (which I also use). In this case, it is more about knowing what people found compelling, outside of the commonly measured metrics like page views, time on page, and sharing statistics.
Perhaps the best way I can explain this is if you simply select some text from this page and paste it somewhere … anywhere. Just copy a little piece of this post and paste it in the comments below to see what I mean (or a text editor, or anywhere else). You may be surprised just how cool it really is. Oh, and there is a FREE version of Tynt! Here is some more information about Tynt.
Please add your comments and tell me what you think about Tynt.
Have you ever been hit with a rogue application on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites? I was, and the application was called “Photas”.
The world is not always as it seems. This often goes double for third party applications for social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I see it all the time when somebody falls for another app that will spam all of their friends. It never happens to me, because I generally stick to only a few known applications, but it happened to me today. A Facebook application titled “Photas” said that somebody has tagged me in a photo. Well, I checked it out, and sure enough, it was false. There was no photo of me. Instead, it sent out the same message to all of my friends. When they allowed the app, the life cycle is complete.
Just a simple warning for you: Think before you click … and beware of “Photas” on Facebook!
Has this ever happened to you? Tell us about it … leave a comment!
I have been thinking about the power and truth of live Internet. The power in the numbers is staggering. Today, we can all be journalists, and many of us clearly have a story to report. In fact, before I finish this article I will demonstrate the potential of social journalism with a live video stream from my cell phone, and have it posted to my Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, and others as it happens … in real time. Speed of information delivery is a huge trend these days, as I pointed out in a recent article about social feeds in Google search results, and once you put it out there, it is not going away.
People love to tell their story, and it is even better if they tell it right when it happens. They often want to tell it before they have too much time to dwell on the details, forget about it, or in many cases even give thought to whether it should be told. If it is an important story, they may even find incentive of wide recognition for being the first on the scene.
This goes well beyond only social journalism. Entertainment has also taken on a whole new look. Earlier tonight my son came to me asking to watch some of our videos from a weekend visit to the zoo. He already had a Wii game on, so instead of showing him on the computer, I played them off my YouTube channel on the big screen television. Then I played some more videos off a laptop in the other room by accessing them through my X-Box 360. This all sounds so insane to me that my kids will never remember having to wait until Gilligan’s Island comes on at four o’clock. Who needs old school television these days, except for those who work for television?
If we did not each have a story to tell, there would not be over 35 million people (out of over 350 million active Facebook users) who update their Facebook status each day, and Twitter may only be a group of about 30 people reporting how the cookout at cousin Evan‘s place went. As it is, the world faces a turmoil of how this all works, and how can we best use all this information.
Where this is going and how it will change our society is a story that is being written each day. For some, it is a story of how drunk they got at a fraternity keg party and are sorry for the embarrassing photos they posted on their social networks. Others will apologize to customers for not being the company they portrayed when their media exposure was more one-way, and worked much slower. In extreme cases, nations will defend political scrutiny such as that of the Iran elections being lambasted on Twitter, and people will run scared from health issues like H1N1.
The threat of misinformation and lack of vetting is there, but the real time “get it now” reality creates an appeal to masses that cannot be overlooked. It opens a lot of questions on the value of real time social journalism. I discussed this with a high school journalism teacher just this evening, and we agreed on many things, but challenged others. Overall, I think our conclusions were inconclusive.
So where does it go, and how cool is it that I just coincided the release of this blog post by streaming the first comment from my cell phone? Now imagine doing that five years ago! I was ultra-high-tech in 2008 when I did a 6,000 mile nine day live mobile auto racing Webcast or my Tornado encounters on my storm chasing Webcast. Now all I need to show you my surroundings along with live GPS and live chat is a cell phone and a service like Qik or LiveCast.
On one hand, being live (or close to it) makes it easier to disclaim discrepancies simply for the fact the facts may not all be known. On the other hand, it can leave a door open to fast spread of misinformation and rumors. One known fact is that people are taking notice in great numbers.
The questions and considerations of social journalism are in no short supply, and I hope your comments are not either. Please tell me and others what you think. Let’s discuss it. Add your comments here, and of course, feel free to message me live with the Meebo chat on the left side of this page.