Social Media Consultant and Tech Geek at Heart

The Audacity of Free: The Products and Services Edition

by Tamar Weinberg on July 29, 2010

Last year, Chris Brogan coined the phrase “the audacity of free” to refer to the entitlement his “friends” feel they have about getting free entry into conferences that he and his team spend months to organize. Somehow, individuals forget along the way that costs accrue when considering the venue, food, exhibit hall, and the staff required on hand to run the event smoothly. At the end of the day, contrary to seemingly popular belief, the hosts aren’t the only ones pocketing the money.

Yet with social media, there’s a perception that it’s easy to score freebies. After all, we become easily connected and six degrees of separation is slowly becoming three degrees.

Social media has introduced incentives to the online space, encouraging others to connect with your business. It shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the way it is. You want something from someone, so you need to compel them to engage or they’d have no reason to. In fact, in a test a colleague of mine ran with sponsored advertisements, the incentive-based campaign was much more successful than the original information-only campaign. But many individuals take this concept too far, expecting a freebie at every turn. And unfortunately, social media is at fault for breeding this mentality and causing it to spread.

This is a preview of The Audacity of Free: The Products and Services Edition. Read the full post (1461 words, 2 images, estimated 5:51 mins reading time)

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7 Deadly Blog Writing Sins

by Tamar Weinberg on July 15, 2010

This is a guest post by Frank Lee.

These days, many people have started a blog for hobby or business. The trouble is, with so much competition out there, your blog really has to stand out from the crowd. In fact, not only does your blog need to stand out from the average ones that are popping up every day, but you also need to compete with established blogs, with their loyal fan bases, that have been around for years. In short, in order to have any impact whatsoever, good is just not good enough. Your blog has to be excellent.

Your Blog Is Not Getting Traffic?

Maybe you’ve set up a blog to advertise your business. Maybe you’ve set up a blog to run AdSense and earn money from the search engines. Maybe you just have a message you want to share. Whatever your motivation, your blog needs traffic to achieve those goals, and to do that, you need great content.

Today I will share with you some blog writing tips from my own experience that are pure gold, and will have you building traffic, and repeat visitors, in no time!

This is a preview of 7 Deadly Blog Writing Sins. Read the full post (946 words, 4 images, estimated 3:47 mins reading time)

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No, You Can’t Automate Social Media!

by Tamar Weinberg on July 7, 2010

Over the past two years or so, social media’s increased popularity has really done something for those assuming that it’s all a “get rich quick” opportunity. The widespread adoption of social media has caused for hordes of “experts” to suddenly come into town assuming that they can totally own this niche. These new “Internet Marketers” take Twitter by storm, using automated Twitter tools in abundance that give them the true appearance of expertise. They are no-name people who all of the sudden have 22,000 followers while following 23,000, but that doesn’t matter because a newbie trying to market his business sees this 5 digit number and gets excited about the opportunities to reach so many people so quickly.

It’s a Utopian mindset but one that clueless business owners step into after following an “expert” and hiring him for services. Many unsuspecting business owners blindly spot the riches of social media based on the appearance of numbers (even though those are usually deceiving). They think, “This guy must be great; he has 30,000 Twitter followers! What’s better than that?”

It’s unfortunately a situation I’ve been picking up more and more on as I see users building their entire social media marketing empire on the basis of automation.

This is a preview of No, You Can’t Automate Social Media!. Read the full post (1779 words, 4 images, estimated 7:07 mins reading time)

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Analysis of Five Top Blogs and What You Can Learn from Them

by Tamar Weinberg on July 1, 2010

Inspired by my recent post on How Young is Too Young?, I was contacted by 16-year-old blogger Onibalusi Bamidele who has guest-written this post.

There is a trend among many new (and even old) bloggers. I discovered many of them tend to quit, lose hope, or even become less dedicated to their blogs when it seems they are not seeing any result for a period of time.

In blogging, however, we all know that there is nothing like overnight success and you will only get what you put into it. If you invest your time and hard work into your blog, then you surely will get something great in return.

This post will analyze five of the most popular blogs on the Internet and will detail a lot of factors about them that contribute to their success; hopefully, you can examine some of the factors and improve on yours.
The following blogs will be analyzed:

  1. ProBlogger
  2. Copyblogger
  3. Daily Blog Tips
  4. Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog
  5. Entrepreneur’s Journey

The following factors will be analyzed:

  1. Their blog age.
  2. Their domain name
  3. Their post type – length, frequency and value.
This is a preview of Analysis of Five Top Blogs and What You Can Learn from Them. Read the full post (1520 words, 6 images, estimated 6:05 mins reading time)

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Dear Facebook Friends, You’re Doing it Wrong

by Tamar Weinberg on June 23, 2010

Unless you’ve gone to a college in the last 10-15 years (and only when the book existed), you may not even know where the name Facebook came from. (In case you want to know, here’s a hint.) Facebook, originally known as thefacebook.com, was a service that connected college students to their classmates and to friends in other universities. The concept was based off a tangible book that incoming freshmen were given each year so that they can meet their classmates. Because of its original simple use (communication!) and its restricted access, people had no need to use any other names on the Mark Zuckerberg-created social network. You could find me by searching for my name (my maiden name, at least). You could find any college student who elected to join by using their first name and last name. They weren’t trying to be silly and they had no reason to self-promote. It was a closed service with almost instant and immediate trust.

It’s how social networks are intended to be used.

This is a preview of Dear Facebook Friends, You’re Doing it Wrong. Read the full post (1499 words, 4 images, estimated 5:60 mins reading time)

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