Everyone is all a flutter today about Twitter’s value to the Iranians who are revolting against the latest Iranian Election.

I’ve been excited about twitter for quite awhile, even enough to program my own twitter app: TwtFollow.

I’ve also noticed twitter being used for many social changes, but think about it. This one service could via extending freedom of speech to thousands who otherwise would not have the methods of mass communication, may enact true and lasting changes in countries like Iran, where media blackouts are weekly events. Where they control every iota of information that their people ingest.

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, may usher in a new era of world peace…or at least help expand communications between those who fight oppression and tyrrany. Who knows when the machines attack, we might use twitter to fight back. (Can you tell I just saw Terminator: Salvation?).

I believe that the more we learn to communicate with each other, the less control those in power will have over us in the future. I’m an optimist though.

What do you think of Twitter’s usage in the Iranian Protests?

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Deltina Hay is a social media consultant and principle owner for the Independent press, Dalton Publishing. Her online presence includes social media sites like PlumbSocial, Social Media Power, and her publishing company Dalton Publishing.

Deltina Hay has presented for many social media and web 2.0 events. She’s also a regular contributor of social media news articles to many online news sites. She has a book on Amazon that you can check out:

A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Optimization

Now for the Meat and Potatoes:

I originally emailed Deltina with a whole list of Social Media questions that I had. As someone who knows a lot about social media, blogging, and internet marketing I was questioning if I had the skillset to consult companies on their social media optimization. I wanted to get to the heart of what it takes to be a successful social media consultant so that if I don’t have the skillset, I can cultivate the skills necessary to compete.

I’m very greatful to Deltina for her answers to these questions as they have been very insightful. I ask all those who enjoy this article to stumble, digg, retweet it, and share it as much as possible – and I also recommend that you visit Deltina’s social circles and get to know her better, if you don’t already follow her.

What exactly is a Social Media Consultant, and why would a business need one?

A social media consultant is a professional who knows how the Internet is evolving, and can help a company evolve with it by implementing, optimizing, and recommending the tools of Web 2.0 that are the best fit for that company.

What education is required?

This is a tricky question, since social media means different things to different types of businesses. Some companies may use the Social Web more for PR, others for marketing, others for SEO. Still others may need social applications, or want to build their entire presence

A well-rounded education then, may require marketing, PR, and SEO basics, as well as familiarity with HTML, PHP, CSS, and Web design.

What is the day to day grind for a Social Media consultant?

Setting up and keeping clients’ accounts up to date. Researching new tools and new features within existing tools. Building CMS sites and themes, coding PHP applications, creating HTML, PHP, or CSS skins for social tools. Reputation management, blog posting, blog commenting, etc.

How did you get started in social media?

As a veteran Web developer, writer, business owner, and book publisher, it was a natural transition.

What should a new social media consultant look to make in the first year?

This depends on their background. If they have the skills to do basic CSS and PHP – building themes and such, they can make $100k out of the gate. But if they need to hire most of the skilled labor out, they are more likely looking at around $30k to $40k.

What are the top three tips you’d give a new social media consultant?

• Educate yourself before heading out of the gate – don’t just stick up a shingle.
• Do not call yourself and Internet marketer, and don’t spam!
• Build your own optimized Social Web foundation first.

What are the most important things to get recurring social media traffic to a site?

Offer quality, original, relevant content. Write content that will help people, not fluff full of links to other people’s posts. Establish yourself as an expert, and they will come to you…

How do you manage to get social without seeming like a spammer?

Transparency and authenticity. Social media is not a “take one pill” solution. Like any good campaign, it takes time to build a reputation. If you go out there inundating people with promotions, events, and branding, then you will get tagged as a spammer. However, if you take the time to build a solid and consistent presence, respecting submission guidelines and only posting items of interest, then you will be well received. Just because you have a business message does not mean you are spamming – just be transparent about it.

How important is video & audio to your success in social media? Is it necessary or can a person be as successful sticking to print?

My main focus has been print, but I still believe in a well-rounded Social Web presence. If it makes sense to produce podcasts, I encourage it. And even if a company has no video of their own, they can still build and embed video galleries of other’s work.

Who in the industry inspires you the most?

Innovative people who get things done and give things back, like Matt Mullenweg, J.D Lasica, Todd Defren, and Seth Godin.

How do you sell social media to non-believers who think it’s just about tweeting info about your latest bowel movement?

The first step is that I never tweet about my own bowel movements. People come to me because they have already been sold on the Social Web. I never do hard selling – they get it or they don’t. I do tell them, though, that the Internet has evolved, and if they do not evolve along with it, Darwin’s theories will do the rest for them…

Does being a Social Media Expert also entail SEO practices?

Yes. SEO as we know it is not going away yet. If you call yourself a Social Media expert, you should already be an SEO expert.

What social sites do you use the most often for your consulting business?

Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn, and Squidoo.

What is the most important thing for a new social media consultant to learn?

That you can’t use old methods on the new tools. Forget what you know about old-school marketing, and learn how to be authentic and transparent. Also, do your homework. Do not represent yourself as something you are not.

Will social media be around in 5 years – and will it still be called social media?

Yes, it will be around in 5 years, and from here on out. It may not be called anything, however, other than “the Internet.”

A company is wanting to tap into social media – what are the steps you take to make them more social?

1. First, an RSS feed (usually in the form of a blog) – that is the backbone of their Social Web presence.
2. From there, an optimized presence in media communities like Flickr and YouTube.
3. Then, I may recommend a couple social networking sites – not too many.
4. Then, on to social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing, social calendars, social pages – specifically what makes the most sense for their business.
5. Then, on to integrating all of them.
6. The last thing I do is train them to do the upkeep on their own – I do not believe that anyone need be dependent on developers or consultants to maintain a healthy presence if they do not choose to be.

What defines success on the social web?

Measuring success in the Social Web is like measuring the success of any marketing or Web venture. You first must define your goals and begin with a base line. Only then can you measure what it was you set out to accomplish.

What Books do you recommend for those wanting to become Social Media Consultants?

I would recommend reading Chris Grodin’s book and my own, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization.

What should a business look for in a Social Media Consultant?

Look for someone with an already optimized presence themselves. Do not choose someone who wants to put you everywhere out there – look for a consultant who wants to understand your business needs and limitations. Ask to see their portfolio or case studies. Social media should not be a hard-sell. If someone is pushing you into something, they are probably not a good fit for you. Also, most of the social tools out there are free, so be clear on what you are being charged for.

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay.
A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization

www.socialmediapower.com, www.plumbsocial.com, www.daltonpublishing.com

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• The brilliant advantage and weakness of social media (broadcasting-brain.com)
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This is the simplest tip I’ll ever write about – it’s also the hardest.

How can you guarantee more traffic?

WRITE MORE POSTS!

Did I say it loud enough for you? Fact: There are a million different things you can do to try and optimize your blog, but if you don’t have the traffic it doesn’t matter. Each blog post I write will bring in at least 200-400 unique hits initially from google and twitter.

That’s a fact. If I write 5 posts a day I’ll get at least 1000-2000 unique hits.

Your theme doesn’t matter, the number of plugins you install don’t matter, the design doesn’t matter (much…) It’s how much quality content you can spit out.

I’ve managed to write around 300 posts in 1 year, I feel disappointed in myself. I took a few months off to work on other projects. My goal for the 3rd year is to write 3 posts per day 5 days a week, or 5 Posts for 3 days a week, or 60+ Posts a month.

Setting goals is important if you’re going to be successful.

What are your posting goals for your blog?

Between Ashton Kutcher, CNN, Larry King, and Oprah the world is now buzzing over Twitter. I personally love twitter, and have used it to build up a number of web properties. (BTW Follow me!)

I love how easy it is to follow real-time trends. I love how fast a person can get questions answered. Sure you could use one of the answer sites like yahoo answers, or anzwers, or ask a ChaCha.com guide, but twitter is almost automatic.

There are many different things you can do on Twitter including:

• Looking for a Job
• Quitting a Job
• Posting Jobs
• Networking
• Getting Engaged
• Dumping People
• Being Dumped
• Getting Business Ideas
• Finding Funding for a Business
• Sharing websites
• Following every minute action a Celebrity takes
• Following the Swine Flu epidemic.
• Arguing Politics
• Social Branding
• Getting blog traffic by Twitter
• Getting Programming Advice via Twitter
• Get out of an Egyptian Prison (it really happened to a Berkley Student)
• Get restaurant recommendations
• etc…

So if there are so many wonderful things that you can do with Twitter… Why are so many people trying it, then leaving it?

According to Nielsen:

Compare it to the two heavily-touted behemoths of social networking when they were just starting out…we found that even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.

Of course Mashable did mention how Nielson only tracks return visits to twitter, and many users don’t use Twitter.com to tweet.

Due to twitter’s api there’s hundreds of different ways to use twitter without ever even visiting twitter.com – e.g. TweetDeck…

Does Nielsen’s Twitter statistics add up? Or do the numbers lie? Do more people ’stick’ than meets the eye?

IMHO I believe that the numbers are way off, and I think there might be more like a 10-15% drop rate. I know a lot of people who Tweet via 3rd party apps.

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Apps are great, but sometimes we can get overloaded by them. Whether they’re facebook apps, iphone apps, wordpress plugins, or myspace apps, sometimes more is not better.

In an effort to bring attention to only the best of the best apps, myspace has announced that they are rolling out a new “Editor’s Pick” category in its application directory, starting next week.

This new category will allow members to quickly sift through the best apps for the platform. Myspace has previously shown off a handful of featured apps, but they were rotated, and did not offer a mechanism for easy browsing.

Now users will be able to access a complete list of the featured apps. Applications on the list will be determined by a team of MySpace employees who work with the day to day application operations. (Myspace affirms that apps will be chosen by merit, and NOT paid sponsorships, of course that is yet to be seen.)

This is a great step in combatting the clutter of spammy apps plagueing sites like myspace and facebook.

Facebook has mentioned a similar program last summer, called a ‘Verified Apps’ program. It is yet to be launched though. Facebook’s program seems to be more structured, and probably more comprehensive than Myspace’s but at least this is a good start. [Via TechCrunch]

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To Follow or to UnFollow – That is the Question!

Right now Twitter is the most hyped social network on the planet. More people are joining Twitter everyday than any other website.

There’s no way to discount that kind of momentum.

Now maybe you’ve been with Twitter for awhile, or just starting out – but you will notice that many people and companies tend to start following those who mention their username, or who follow them first.

Here’s a round up of a bunch of tools, apps, and scripts to help you do the very same thing.

1. Twollow – a cool twitter tool that will automatically follow everyon that mentions specific keywords on twitter. It places limits though, so that you don’t get flagged or banned.
2. Hummingbird – a professional tool for quickly building your Twitter network, without being framed a spammer. Give it a try today!
3. TweetLater – This site has tons of great features. They have a pro and free version. Some of the features include: Scheduled tweets, track keywords on twitter, save and reuse drafts, send welcome DM’s to new followers, follow those who follow you, unfollow those who unfollow you, vet new followers, personal status feed, use on unlimited twitter accounts, and many more…
4. SocialTool – A service that keeps your follower list in sync across multiple networks (currently has options for facebook, and twitter). Also protects you from following spammers!
5. “How to Autofollow on Twitter” – PHP Script that auto-follows anyone that follows you.
6. staynalive.com- Another script that auto-follows those who follow you.
7. Raduboncea.ro – Same script, only this one is a python script and also sends a DM to those who follow you.

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Google has too much power online, they can make and break anyone that they choose.

If you write a bad article about them, or sell links, or do this or that, they can remove your site from search, not that I get much traffic from search, thankfully I’m a social marketer more than an seo marketer, and most of my traffic comes from pinging identi.ca, twitter, friendfeed, and facebook.

Apparently if somebody clicks a bunch on adsense ads on your website, you WILL get banned from adsense, does this seem fair? I didn’t do a thing, one person ruined me from collecting my adsense revenue. After a year I was at $90 and then in one day got $7 worth in ad clicks. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who works for google made all the clicks so they wouldn’t have to pay me.

I even told google about the suspicious activity, before I was banned. Does this seem right? Sure, I could go register a new adsense account in my wife’s name, but what would stop them from banning her account when we reach $90 again?

Which is why I’m launching a new facebook group: Google Haters. This is a group of people who basically hate google, perhaps a union of bloggers standing up for our own rights. According to google the internet is a tyrrany and google rules, but I believe we can fight back.

Have you been banned from adsense, adwords, or search rankings? Drop your comments or join the Google Haters group on facebook. We’ll have adsense click-off weekends, and do our best to wreak havoc on the internet king. I’m totally peeved at this and I believe in fighting back when I’ve received an injustice. If you’ve been hurt by google in anyway this will be a great way to fight back.

Join the facebook group now!

Of course you can call me mad, or an idiot, or over-reacting, but just wait – anyone can be hit by google, I always did my best to follow all the rules, I never broke any rules, and I still got banned. It can happen to anyone, I highly recommend just quitting google and trying another ad network.

Jason Calacanis, one of the most influential bloggers on the scene right now, founder of Mahalo, exploiter of twitter and facebook, has announced he is going to quit blogging. What has the world come to? Eh, maybe it’s for the better.

I’m waiting to see a social network popup just around ‘betting’ whether or not he will come back to blogging. After-all I’ve quit blogging for a bit usually during the summer slow-down, but I always come back. For a true blogger, it’s almost an addiction, I can’t see how one can claim to completely give it up..but we will see.

After all Jason is known for link-bait scams, perhaps this is another one of his publicity stunts.

My personal message to Jason Calacanis: If this truly is the end for you, I tease, but I hardly know you, I regret not having the opportunity to get to know you better, or form any kind of relationship. I do however wish you the best of luck in any endeavor that you go to from here. Have a happy retirement!

Related articles:

• Life without JC
• Jason Nation leads to resignation [Jason Calacanis]
• Official announcement regarding my retirement from blogging.
• Jason Calacanis picks fight in Palo Alto with missing Wikipedia founder [Jimmy Wales]
• From the Pipeline – 7.11.08

Obama is somewhat of a newcomer on the political scene, and yet he has garnered a huge following.

He has beat great odds to become the number 1 candidate for presidency. He is even beating McCain out by many points in states that normally go to republicans, like Montana.

Why is this?

Because Obama has embraced web 2.0.

He has embraced sites like facebook, twitter, and youtube. He, and / or those on his marketing team know the power that social media holds. Not to mention many fans of Obama can be found embracing social media – for instance this popular video by Obamagirl.

Obama, is also the only candidate suggesting a cabinet position aimed at web / technology.

I personally believe that Obama’s use of web 2.0 and social media may be the beginning of a paradigm shift in America. I believe that we may be on the verge of a new era in US politics. Call me optimistic, but I believe with social media, politicians will hold less power, and more power will be put in the hands of the people.

Most Americans believe that we’re headed in the wrong direction. Many believe that a huge catastrophe is on the horizon. Whether natural or economic, our future is not certain anymore.

All things change, and many things always need change but go unchanged. I believe for America to survive that there will come a day of reckoning where the great minds of the country will have to get together and re-organize our country from the ground up.

The reason we have a representative democracy and not a full democracy is mostly because in the days of the founding fathers it would’ve been a logistical nightmare. They didn’t have the lines of communication that we have today.

If you’re a skeptic on the power of social media, you really should check out opencongress.org it is a refreshing social network brought to us by: Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.

This is a great site for following the politicians that you want to follow. You can see their voting patterns, history, etc. You can also see other politicians like them, or those who are totally the opposite.

You can follow the issues that matter most to you, like Access to Health care, Abortion, etc…

You can actually vote on the issues, and bills that you’d like to see pass legislation.

The site doesn’t get as much publicity as it should – yet. But I can see it becoming a huge playing field for bi-partisan politics to take hold.

Those who aren’t net-savvy may miss out here on this great opportunity to share their voice / opinion, but I believe this is a great start to a new democracy 2.0.

To read more about the features of OpenCongress.Org check out this article at ReadWriteWeb.

Here are some good related articles:

• The Facebooker Who Friended Obama
• Obama and the Facebooker
• Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder, Has Big Role in Obama Campaign
• How Barack Obama won Facebook

First off, I love twitter, it is definitely my pick as far as social networks go, but I cannot discount the power and reach of facebook.

My current goal is to get as many facebook friends as possible, facebook has built in protections for adding a ton of friends so I would just like to ask you, my readers to take a moment and add me to your facebook friend’s list. Let’s see if I can get to 5000 by the end of April, 2008.

Just go here to add me.

Update: I forgot what year it is, updated 2007 to 2008 in title.  

Life stream, I believe it was facebook who first came up with the idea.

Now most social networks have it built in. Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, simply are nothing more than a lifestream.

Friendfeed and Socialthing both aggregate all of your feeds, and lifestreams.

Friend feed recently announced the launch of an API which you can read about here, here, and here.

Mashable did a good write up today listing 8 life streaming sites.

Here’s the list:

1. Correlate.us - has cool graphing features regarding your life stream.
2. Friendfeed - Need I say more? Most talked about aggregator, combines most of your social networks, blogs, lifestreams into one.
3. Iminta.com - currently in private beta, but offers 26 services. You can read a more detailed review here.
4. Life2Front.com – has the goal of pushing virtually more content to your feed, than any other service out there. Currently in private beta.
5. LiveZuu.com - Lifestreaming, with a focus on sleekness and prettified designs.
6. Mybloglog.com – This has been a community player for a long time, and has recently added lifestreaming.
7. OneSwirl.com – Same as the rest, with the feel of an rss reader, and an event calendar.
8. Profilactic.com – Supports over 150 different services that you can import from, letting your friends, and colleagues no virtually everything you could possibly do online…
9. Socialthing.com – Currently in private beta, it’s goal is to allow you to bring your friends with you, wherever you go onto any network.

Right now it seems the two biggest competitors are Friendfeed and SocialThing, Friendfeed seems on top for now though because they are always adding new features, and their launch of an api will only make the service better, where as Social thing, is getting in the game a little later, and has a lot to catch up on.

We scored a video of the New Facebook IM, that’s about to be launched in the ‘next few weeks’, via Mashable.com.

It seems to be something akin to Gtalk, the only issue that seems to be looming big, is what it will amount to for those with a huge number of friends. For some in the 5000 friends club, it could be a nightmare sorting through IMs, that of course is yet to be seen.

Personally, I think it’s amazing they have waited so long to launch a chat device, that’s almost one of the first things launched on most social networks.

Watch the Video: