Social media is an ever evolving part of internet marketing. There are thousands and tens of thousands of social networks out there with sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg being some of the bigger players. A lot of companies want to just run head first into social media without having any sort of plan. One of the first steps someone should take is to learn the lingo. Twitter is the best one to use as an example since there are things like URL shorteners, hash tags and tweets.

Before jumping into a social network, or maybe even signing up, start running through the public timeline. See how people are structuring their messages and pick out things that aren’t familiar. If you quickly scan Twitter, you’ll see messages with things like this:

• # – Hash tag, used for tracking and other things
• bit.ly or ow.ly – Examples of URL or link shorteners, allows you to fit a longer URL in your tweets
• FollowFriday – used to tell your followers about people on Twitter you find useful
• @ – Use this followed by someones handle or username to reply to them
• RT – Stands for Retweet, passing on or forwarding someone else’s tweet

These are just a handful of unique things to Twitter. If a scan had be done, someone could pick these out and find out what they mean so they use them properly. It would be embarrassing for something to jump in and start tweeting to then use the lingo wrong and look silly. Something as simple as saying “FridayFollow” when the correct terminology is “FollowFriday” can put egg on someone’s face and let everyone on Twitter know they’re a newbie.

As most know, SEO traffic is something that gets built up over time. You spend upfront time doing research, picking your targets, then getting your hands dirty with the details. It is very rewarding to be able to take a site and start making improvements to see the traffic increase from the search engines. The #1 most annoying thing that can happen is a robots.txt gets uploaded that starts to tank your search traffic. To give some background, a robots.txt file is a simple text file that gives the search engines instructions like where to find your sitemap and what not to crawl. You might use a robots.txt file to disallow a search engine from crawling your content management system’s (CMS) admin or another password protected part of your site.

An example of a robots.txt file that would disallow a WordPress CMS admin would look like this:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /wp-admin

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

If I didn’t want any search engines crawling my site, I would do this:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

That simple little / can get a whole entire site removed from the search engine results pages (serps). Time and time again I’ve seen sites fall to this terrible problem. One of the ways I’ve seen it happen is the development company uses a server where they test new features, code, etc. They use a robots.txt to tell the search engines to not index the development site since it would be a duplicate of the live site. When they finish their programming, they copy files from the development site to the live site, forgetting about the robots.txt and taking it live. Weeks or even months later, someone is putting something together and finds the site not ranking for even their brand name.

All I have to say is 2010 is going to be a crazy year! I can’t believe its already July! I wanted to post an update on what I’ve been up to thus far and where I’m going next both personally and professionally. I’ve been away from my blog for some time, but I’m going to try to keep posting more frequently. There were circumstances up until this point that I just refrained from posting in my free time. I’ve been thinking of topics and just creating draft posts, even if I don’t finish them right away. I’ve even been posting these from my Moto Droid with the WordPress app so I don’t forget the topic or idea. Hopefully this will help me keep on track and be able to share more ideas as they come up!

Personally

Some know I got engaged last summer and am getting married in a little less than a month! July 24th is the wedding day and I’m super excited! It has been a lot of planning and preparation, mostly taken on by my fiance Lisa.

Besides wedding planning, Lisa and I have just been getting everything set for life after the wedding. We also added 2 members to the household, first Murphy and now Weazy our bearded dragons. I’ve ALWAYS wanted lizards, ask my mom. For the longest time I wanted to get an Iguana and she would never let me, which is probably good because fresh vegetables every day would be a pain.

Oscar, the beagle, is still here as well. He’s about 5 years old now and still very active. He ceases to amaze me and seems to be getting smarter and more mature. He always had trouble listening and over the last year has started to behave better and be calm. His new trick is escaping from the kitchen after he has slowly destroyed one of the gates.

Professionally

I have recently left The Karcher Group (TKG) as of July 2nd. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at TKG and learned a lot in the process. It was a hard decision to leave but ultimately for the best. I’ve taken the position as COO of Upright Publishing. I’m so excited about this opportunity to continue to grow and develop. This kind of takes me out of the day to day SEO game which I’ll miss, though I’m sure I will still keep up on things and be working on my skills. Upright will still keep me in the internet marketing space though. At TKG my primary focus was on organic SEO and social media where as now, things will be more diverse and it’s not an agency.

I’m really excited not only for this month (July 2010) but for the rest of the year! Look for more posts to come as well, I hope I can start sharing things I’ve learned and continue to learn!

Guest Post: Colin Brimfield

So I need to write a post about a charity to get into a charitable poker tournament. After doing some research and considering my options I am choosing The Sierra Club. As a kid I grew up on camping in California. We spent time in the western, southern and eastern sierras. Places like Owen’s Valley, Big Bear, and Yosemite are some of the most beautiful spots on earth. It’s truly awesome how many great ecological wonders are available in California and the western U.S. in general.

The Sierra club represents people like me, environmentally conscious regular people who love nature. I am no saint when it comes to the environment but I do what I can and I try my best to protect and enjoy what we have. The Sierra club is one of the oldest and most well respected environmental organizations and clubs and it makes an impact. I would encourage anyone I meet to do 2 things: go to California to see Yosemite and the Sierras and read about The Sierra Club.

I’m super excited! I’ve wanted to go to Pubcon for a few years now, almost went last year but was super slammed and couldn’t escape to Vegas for it. We’re leaving today, flying out of Cleveland around lunch time and will be in Vegas early this afternoon.

There are a ton of awesome events at Pubcon. My good friend DK really goes all out I hear with the poker tournament, burgers, fight clubs and more! Check out his overview here. He has 2 Fight Clubs this year: Fight Club at Randy Coutures’ gym and Fight Club with Robert Drysdale. Drysdale is a really awesome dude, super laid back. I got to meet him at ThinKTank this summer. Check out his site for more on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Las Vegas. He is also in the video below which is pretty slick.

Can’t wait to connect with friends at Pubcon! Brian has a bet going that he can out drink both the Madhat and Streko. He better not back out, its going to be absolutely hysterical to see!

Leading up to ThinkTank this year DK and Andy ran a contest to benefit a charity. The charity they were promoting was Future Hope. I had never heard of this charity before but I read into it when DK and Andy were talking about it. You can see how Andy has been involved with this charity in the recap that DK gives here. Guys like Shoe, DK, and Andy are real inspirations to me for the work they do and giving back.

This is what Future Hope does:

Future Hope provides education and career opportunities to poverty stricken communities through the use of technology.

The Mission of Future Hope is to provide education and career opportunities to poverty stricken communities through the use of technology. Future Hope will:

Utilize technology and the Internet to provide training and support through local mentors, online training, and person-to-person communication. Local mentors would be trained by the local church community network.

Introduce basic business skills to the communities.

Introduce opportunities for the communities to accept contract technical work from established firms.

Aid the communities in achieving self-sustainability of the program in a few years time frame.

I would check out their site and get involved. It’s really amazing what people are doing to help out!

DK is putting on ThinkTank again this year in September and I’m so fortunate to be able to go again! Last year was a blast and I got to meet a lot of awesome people! This year I will not be diving off any surfboards however!

One of the guys I met is Andy Liu. Andy is an entrepreneur and runs BuddyTV. He is giving away an opportunity to go to ThinkTank! This is awesome, especially since you can’t even buy a way in since it’s sold out! Here are some of the details Andy lays out:

All you have to do is blog (if you don’t have one, start one!) about your startup’s single biggest challenge and your thoughts on how to solve that challenge. If you don’t have a startup, blog about your biggest challenge to starting that new venture and how you’ll solve that problem. In the comments below link to your post and I’ll be sure to read your post. I’ll select the best post by August 31st at noon PST. This is a $3,500 value to a sold-out conference and is open to anyone over the age of 21 in the US. No purchase necessary:)

There is also a chance to win a ticket to Startup Day for the 2nd best post and more importantly, to help out the non-profit Future Hope.

DK over at Purpose Inc and the ThinkTank has graciously offered to send an El Salvadorian student to receive one year of computer training up to a total of 30 children and adults through Future Hope. Not only does Future Hope provide computer and Internet training, it also provides leadership training to set up opportunities for a better life in the future. This is a program that has been around for over 4 years and continues to donate nearly 100% of its receipts directly to El Salvador, there are no paid staff members in the US. The children and adult students that attend come from a community that is considered extremely impoverished or living under $2/day. It is a tremendous program and your post will make a difference.

Check out Andy’s post for all the details of the ThinkTank contest and good luck!

I’ve been neglecting my blog for awhile now and I didn’t realize how long it has been until I took a closer look. It feels like I just wrote on it yesterday! Since my last post there have been at least 2 SEO seminars I have spoken at, 2-3 breakfast bootcamps, and a handful of other things going on!

I am going to try and make a big push to keep the blog up going forward. I’ve been learning a lot and hope to share those ideas here. Some of the things I have been learning more and more about each day are programming, SEO/SEM, affiliate marketing, business, and more. It really has been crazy. I feel like the last 3 weeks have been all over the place but it will be for the best!

I’m pleased to announce that I will be speaking at the Karcher Group’s Akron SEO Seminar in September! I will be talking about social media and all the fun stuff involved. The conference is the 18th and 19th of September and there are still spots available to register! We will also be having Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends and Jake Baillie from STN Labs speaking at this seminar.

Some of the topics that will be covered besides social media are blogging, copy writing, PPC, and link building. I have heard Jake speak before and he is a really good speaker so I’m excited to be speaking along with him and all the others. If you are interesting in attending, you can click on the link below. My discount code is COREY and it will save you $100 which is an awesome discount!

Akron SEO Seminar

A buddy of mine, Kurt Krejny, wrote a really good article for Marketing Pilgrim on reputation management and how to pounce on negative search engine results that could hurt your or your companies reputation.

He gives a lot of great information especially on tracking reputation online. These strategies can be used for both personal and business reputations and brands.

Check out his article Sure-fire Strategies to Pounce On Negative Search Engine Results!