I personally want as many people to enjoy and congratulate me on my pointed insights as possible.  The more influential people that do so, the more I can tell myself how great I am.

This is where people get into trouble with StumbleUpon.  People just want to see that traffic bump.  They know it won’t last long, but it’s so good when it’s there.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Stumble.  I’m approaching 8,000 thumbed up websites.  But I feel like there is an inherent misunderstanding going on when it is used for self promotion.

Stumble Upon users are notoriously fickle and immune to advertising.  They are in it for their quick fix.  If they run into something that is outside the purview of what they are looking for (which they have no idea what that is), they will Stumble away, or even more horrible, give the site a thumb down.

We have a couple articles that we’ve played around with for promotion on StumbleUpon, and it’s interesting to see their numbers.  Even pages that have StumbleUpon users going so far as voting on subjects will receive relatively low numbers in terms of ‘thumb ups’.

While it may be fun to self-promote with StumbleUpon, be wary.  It’s users do not care about you or your products unless they are highly eclectic.  Rarely, very rarely, even when I find a site I think is genuinely interesting, do I save it for return.  Your mind isn’t in it for the cool find, it’s more so in it for the quick fix of “cool, entertain me”.  While you may want a quick fix to lagging traffic, keep in mind that your StumbleUpon detour will likely end in unreturned feelings.  I would say that on the overall, maybe 5% of any one blog is actually going to appeal to Stumblers.

If you want to play around with StumbleUpon for pure link building strategy, you must create something worthy of linkage… linkbait if you will.  Make it quick and dirty fun.

StumbleUpon, for most, is that girl that you tried too hard with and ended up rejecting you.  Don’t be that guy, choose the stuff you promote carefully.

What is this Social Media thing?
I like to define it as utilizing social platforms and networks to connect and share with people who have similar interests, needs, wants, etc. as you do. Some of the most popular social platforms and social networks are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and MySpace.

Why is there so much buzz around using Social Media for Marketing and Advertising?
Well, good question. I think the first thing to keep in mind is the strategy behind Social Media is unlike traditional advertising and online advertising.  It has it’s own methods and metrics to define success.  If done correctly, you can create a successful dialogue with consumers to help support their needs and fulfill information voids.  Results can lead to increased loyalty, brand awareness and visibility for your company.   It’s essentially brand building, marketing, and PR all wrapped into one.

A few key takeaways to doing Social Media right:

1. Understand your audience. Who are they, where are they, what are they talking about?
2. Start small. Define a small goal on how to reach your audience. Then have a big lofty one.
3. Define metrics for success and the tools to use. How are you measuring marketing effectiveness now? Understand the metrics for each type of Social Media phase and platform.
4. Give up control. Understand that you must be willing to lose control and listen to what people are saying, learn from them, adjust. Be honest, be helpful, be there!
5. Invest. Understand that you must find the right labor to manage and care for it.  Often times you will be trading media costs for labor costs. Social Media is not free.
6. Respond quickly.
7. Be patient. Be willing to invest long-term and not receive immediate results.
8. Fail and try again. Be willing to try many different things before getting it right (blogs, twitter, forums, Facebook, etc.) and be willing to fail miserably and try again.

Don’t know where to start? Post questions or comments below or call us at 602-275-3935, we’re happy to help.

Hey everyone, Stumblers helped us get 2nd place last year, help us this year to make us #1!

We’re up for a popularity contest in Arizona called “Ranking Arizona” that happens every year and ends in just a couple weeks (July 31st) and we wanted to see what Stumble Upon could do. Here’s the thing, it takes thousands of votes to win so we’re going to see if Stumble Upon users are up to the task.

You can vote twice per e-mail address and with as many e-mail addresses as you’d like; the more the merrier. Just remember to thumbs up this original article so that we can get this thing movin’.

Vote Here on Ranking Arizona for Liberty Interactive Marketing

3 Easy Steps to Vote:
1. Select Name
2. Type LIBERTY INTERACTIVE
3. Enter email address and hit vote!

We’re going to update the stats on this page as we get them in terms of how many people are clicking through to Ranking Arizona, but if we win we can get the numbers and see what Stumble Upon did down to the specific vote.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to leave a comment letting us know how many times you voted! A FREE Liberty Interactive Marketing shirt is yours if you voted the most.

A select group of 160,000 companies were chosen to be included on LinkedIn’s company profiles.  I stumbled upon a former employer of mine (privately held company) and what I found absolutely astounded me. Here’s the list:

a. Career path for XYZ employees after they left XYZ company (a listing of competitors)
b. What other companies these XYZ employess were most connected/associated with (another list of competitors)
c. Key statistics included but were not limited to: company size, top schools, median age, and percentage of male to female
d. A listing of recent employee promotions, new hires, popular profiles (aka star employees) and more.

And at the bottom of the page in light light gray barely visible letters it said:
This LinkedIn Company Profile was created by LinkedIn and is about XYZ Company. This page is not endorsed by or affiliated with XYZ company.

LinkedIn has claimed they are going to start allowing companies to edit these pages, but that was in March – 4 months ago.  In the meantime, this is prime pickings for recruiters and competitive poaching. [SIDE NOTE: Also, how will this editing profile work? In a company of 50, there can be one ring leader, but what about a company of 1,000 or more employees? If all employees are able to edit, how will disgruntled employees be handled? What will prevent users from creating fake profiles to dog other competitors?]

I realize that all this information is provided by the user, but LinkedIn snagged it all and aggregated it without allowing companies to protect themselves.  Do companies need to start adding a sentence to their  employment policy that employees are not allowed to have a profile on LinkedIn?

I feel a bit betrayed by LinkedIn.

Here’s why – we all know that 1:1 marketing has become a major influencer in why many companies are shifting their dollars online.  But remember back in the day, and still to some extent, market research was an aggregation of mass research? Where you knew specific things about a collective group of people but nothing personal. Today, with all the available social networking sites and other Internet marketing tactics we have personal information on our audience. Down to bra size.  We have personal information that we can use to target individuals to get them to buy our product or service.  This is scary. And no, I’m not just realizing this now.  I am a huge proponent of this type of marketing – in fact, I love it and I love being marketed to like this.

But when it comes to data being aggregated involuntarily by a third party that effects a larger body simply because other individuals have posted their personal information, that is where I feel this controversy begins.  And where does it all end?

Back in the day, the great thing about the Internet was that it had a high level of anonymity.  Now, your personal information is up for grabs.

Does anyone else think these new company profiles on LinkedIn are controversial?

You can think of it as a very large boob tube of Web stuff from web pages to videos. The cool thing is it delivers Web sites to you based on your preferences (e.g. art, photography, search marketing, SEO, gadgets, real estate, etc.) You can change these preferences at will. The system learns what you like and brings you more. If only TV was this easy, right?

You can search sites from their Web site at www.stumbleupon.com or download the toolbar for Firefox IE (recommended).

While it may seem like mindless pleasure to spend hours on end stumbling just for instant satisfaction and entertainment – there really are other benefits to StumbleUpon and it can serve as an exceptional online marketing tool.

Here’s why you should use StumbleUpon:

1. Research and Discovery – you can change your interest preferences to your liking at any time.  For instance, if I am specifically looking for sites or related photos, videos on the topic of Internet marketing, SEO, SEM, etc. I can change my preference interests to show me sites related to this (Internet and Internet Tools). You can basically cut hours of research and discovery time down by stumbling instead of trying to come up with the right combination of keywords to type into search engines.

2. Surf the Web - literally and organically. We are all friends of the remote control and now you are always in control, your roommate or significant other can’t steal your Stumble toolbar from you.  For good entertainment I recommend Bizarre/Oddities, Beer, and Quizzes interests.  Sit back and channel surf – hours of pure entertainment.

3. Search – Dare I say that this may be the future of search? Well, it should be.  While the big 3 are honing their algorithms to show the most relevant results based on backlinks, content, history, etc.  StumbleUpon is backing into it by asking users to rate, review, and tag these sites.  You can actually use StumbleUpon as a search engine for immediate results (versus option 1 above).  Type in anything that you are looking for and a listing of results will show with thumbnails, number of reviews, tags and recent “thumbs up.”

4. Social Networking and Bookmarking - The community and tools on StumbleUpon (SU) are fierce. The major feature to SU is their expansive social bookmarking abilities. It’s not just one way there are multiple ways to interact and connect – you can view all your favorite sites, view sites that your friends like, that people with your interests like, blog it, talk about it, have folks review it, etc.

Maybe in a later post, I’ll touch on marketing and advertising opportunities through StumbleUpon and how they have impacted the SU community and results.

But for now, get out there and thumbs up someone today. Just don’t let the boss catch you after hours upon hours on StumbleUpon.

Now, back in the day, I was a user of trillian. However, Trillian never really impressed me, and I ended up just using AIM ad-hack or something similar. Something that would enhance AIM beyond the plain old vanilla, but not too crazy. Well now that Google talk is becoming a bigger kid on campus, I kind of wanted to go multi-client again. Which leads me to Digsby.

If you are the social networking type, and have been playing around on the intertubes with stuff like facebook, myspace, twitter, etc this program is a godsend. It will keep facebook chat, google talk, AIM, MSN, etc open while also checking your gmail, facebook notifications, myspace stuff, twitters, etc. It all does this in a really nice pretty little package that just warms the heart.

DOWNLOAD DIGSBY AND BE HAPPY!

At first glance it looks like a site that is for searching music, even having the unique ability for users to search music by singing or humming a song into their computer microphone. The site then generates a listing of results that closest match your tune. However, there is another wonderful attribute to this site – the ability to actually become a star on the site. You’re able to record your singing clips and post them to the site for others enjoyment. Interstingly enough, you find yourself on this site for way too long listening to everyone. It’s like online karaoke! And really, who doesn’t love that?

Check out how the site works: http://www.midomi.com/index.php?action=main.video&from=landing