Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 14 of February , 2008 at 10:37 am Leave a comment
Recent changes have opened Facebook up to everyone. Whoever you are, you can now use Facebook to your best advantage, to expand your reach, to promote you, to solidly brand you.
Facebook is not just about old friends from school anymore. Plan: what connections would benefit you most in the future? What really fascinates you? If you could do anything, what would it be? What industry would you work in? What specific people, or what categories of people would be your closest friends & confidantes?
For effective Facebook branding, find groups that fall in your category and join them. Make friends amongst the group members. Go back and read over your personal profile. If you were one of these people YOU want to connect with, what would be your impression of you? Is that a profile of someone YOU would like and trust?
Fill out every box in your profile. The purpose of social marketing is to connect with the right people. Who knows exactly what they will see that will make the connection happen? So jam every G-rated bit of yourself that you can into that profile. You never know who will connect with you because your favorite movie is “The Maltese Falcon.” Give them plenty of intersection points.
As visitors write on your Facebook wall, compare what they say to your brand. You must know what your brand is, have it sharply defined, then eliminate what shouldn’t be there. Get rid of anything that doesn’t contribute to your brand.
To strongly connect with the right people, put out there who you really are. Write on other walls. Put up a comment about their pictures. Ask questions. The more you are part of their Facebook life, the more chance your brand will make an impression. Plus, they see you as being serious about the medium.
Don’t make your profile too busy. If you include a bunch of apps, it will obscure the real you. Keep it simple, so it’s easy to see your Facebook brand.
If you can do video, add a YouTube application to your Facebook profile. And if you can’t do video, learn to. Visitors can really bond with you when they watch your well-planned 2-minute video. Optimum, of course, is an on-brand video that enhances who you are.
Promote your profile. Just doing a profile isn’t enough. It will sit there forever, adding no value to your life or anyone else’s. Strategy #1 is to join those targeted groups and interact with the other group members. And once you have a bit of experience with that … define exactly what would be the ideal group you’d like to join. Then create it yourself. What better way to find the specific people you want to connect with?
Evaluate your Facebook brand at least weekly. Update something. Social marketing is not a sport for hermits. You need to demonstrate that you are serious, and serious visitors will notice. You will get to meet those targeted people that otherwise would never have found you.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 13 of February , 2008 at 9:10 am Leave a comment
Discussion Forums give you the opportunity to place your thoughts and skills in front of a large community of people who are really, really, really dedicated to a niche. In other words, the right active niche forum could turn out to be a very, very good group of targeted prospects for your business. And for every person who is active in the forum, there are probably 10 who just lurk, reading everything, looking for the right people to connect with, never saying a word.
You have a chance to connect with ALL of that forum community. It can be a wonderful opportunity for you.
On the other hand … do you remember when Harrison Ford got tossed into the snake pit in the first “Indiana Jones” movie? He hated snakes, and he was thrown into a hole with hundreds of them. That could easily be you, if you aren’t careful about approaching a new forum.
Don’t believe me? OK. Search Google and find some active forum in your niche. Sign up and jump right in with a new post about the wondrous things you can do for everybody. Then listen to the background “hum” in your new community. Oops! That’s no hum. Those are RATTLES! Can you hear them?
The snakes are there for the same reason you are there: to find prospects and to cultivate customers. If they think you may be a prospect, they’ll be polite and helpful. But they’re still a rattlesnake. None of them wants more competition. If they see you as a competitive threat, they’ll gang up and swarm you, and you will disappear in a hurry.
So approach any discussion forum with care. Practice common-sense reputation management. If you moved into a new community, you wouldn’t stand on your rooftop and start screaming about what a great new neighbor everybody has just gotten. Don’t do it in a forum, either. Never introduce yourself by making a claim. Watch the forum for awhile, get an idea where the snakes are, and start your participation by asking for advice here and there.
Your best plan is to hang around and ask a thoughtful question or two and let the community get to know you. You can usually include a signature file with your post, linking to your website.
While you are there, keep a list of the questions other forum community members ask. What is their biggest problem? Write a report, or record an mp3 file, or a video. Solve some common problem for them. Offer the information for free to all the other community members. This time, you definitely want to include a signature file linking back to your website.
By now, you are an accepted, welcome member of the discussion forum community. You can fully participate in discussions without being flamed … so long as you know your stuff. Anytime you get too big for your britches, the snakes will come after you. So make it a point to always know and be able to prove what you are talking about.
And it never hurts to grow your own big rattle, either.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 12 of February , 2008 at 6:13 am Leave a comment
You can build a valuable social marketing network on MySpace by doing the right things … and by not doing the wrong things.
For example … take a look at the MySpace comments on any profile with a lot friends. Almost certainly, over 50% of the comments are, “Thanks for the add.” So in the first interaction with their new MySpace friend, over half of humanity yells out the exact same words. The reader pays no attention, because they see these same words over and over and over.
Why not just write, “Hi. I have ZERO creativity!” or “You are no one special to me!” Why even bother?
People want recognition and validation. They want to be in the “in” group so they’ll know they are popular. But at the same time, they want to feel like they’re unique, one-of-a-kind.
When you add a MySpace comment to someone’s profile, you have an opportunity to create a big impression by delivering on one of these most basic human desires. Not only that … all over this comments section - before YOURS! - are people who can’t think of anything more intimate to say than, “Thanks for the add.” You have a chance to stand out from all of them, over and above all of them.
Remember the old line, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression?” Well, this is your shot. If you say, “Thanks for the add,” then you are just one more in a long series of mind-numbed robots. If you really want to build relationships, it will take a little work, attention, and creativity.
Start with the end in mind. When you are doing social marketing, you want them to click on YOUR picture and go to your profile and read about you, because that is what will really heat up the relationship. If your comment is the same as all the others, why would anyone click on your picture?
So make yourself stand out. When you look at their profile, focus on their list of books (”To Kill a Mockingbird was my favorite, too! Did Harper Lee ever write any other books?”), movies (”Great movie list. I loved Dr. Zhivago, especially the ice castle. What did you like best?”), where they live (”Wow! My best friend is from Germany! Do you ever get to Hamburg?”), who they’d like to meet (”When you and George Clooney get together, PLEASE call me! Which of his body parts is your favorite?”), location (”My husband grew up in Cleveland. Do you ever go down to The Jake to watch the games?”), occupation, schools, their “About me” section, etc. Or anything else (”I’ve seen a lot of MySpace sites. I LOVE your design! My site just doesn’t seem as hot.”)
Find something - anything - you can connect with. Make it a positive comment about them. Show them that unlike everyone else, YOU actually care enough to have read their MySpace profile. And THEN ask a question or add another line designed to get them to click on your photo and come to your site. You don’t have to be that clever, since nobody else is giving them ANY reason to click on their picture. Just notice something about them, and comment on it.
This is a great social networking opportunity. You can easily stand out from the MySpace competition, because they all (even some of the person’s close friends) say, “Thanks for the add.” But you, whom they have never met or talked to, actually read their profile and comment favorably on it. You deliver the recognition and validation they want. That could be the start of a beautiful relationship.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 11 of February , 2008 at 11:05 am Comments (1)
The 80/20 rule applies to social marketing as much as it does to anything else. If you’ve never heard of it, the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. Here’s a small, easy, quick procedure for getting big results from your social marketing program: It’s called anchor text.
One thing people use social marketing for is to get links to their business website, bringing more traffic and increasing their site’s search engine ranking. For the best results, give some thought to the keyword phrase you would most like to rank #1 for in search engine results. What words do people search for when they are looking for a site like yours?
Your Social Media Site Profile
Let’s say you specialize in cloth dollmaking. If so, you’d probably love to have your website show up at the top of Google results when someone searches for a handmade cloth doll. Keeping in mind that your social marketing profile alone won’t make your organic search listings, you can influence your website’s link popularity directly, and your organic listings indirectly through that, by including a bit of anchor text in your social marketing profile. The way you do it is like this:
Go to the social site of choice
Register to use the site
Go into your profile page and add your bio and other information about yourself
Find the place where you are allowed to enter information about your business or website
Write your description using anchor text, but don’t overdo it (one or two instances of anchor text is fine
When you include the anchor text in your profile information, make it a part of the regular flow of your description. Make your description stand out by focusing on user benefits and throw in the anchor text in the middle of your paragraph to make it look natural. It will look something like this:
I’ve been making dolls ever since I learned to hand sew in junior high. Over the years, I have made more than 300 specialty dolls and have created my own line of handmade cloth dolls based on some popular models on the market. My dolls are safe for children as they are soft and machine washable. You can see my dolls at http://grammiesdolls.yorkadamssmb.com.
I recommend including one instance of your URL and one instance of anchor text in all of your social marketing profiles. That way, you can use the URL as a branding tool and if it is easy enough to remember then you might encourage return visits to your website through direct browser input rather than searches in the search engines. Your anchor text will weigh more in the search engine algorithms due to the keyword phrase that is important to your site.
How To Create Anchor Text
When you create your profile be sure to pay attention to the policies of the social marketing site that you are using. They all different ways of creating links and some don’t allow links at all. Here are some policies you might encounter:
Use of plain HTML
BBC code or wiki
Proprietary code unique to that site
Anchor text not allowed
External links not allowed
Yes, some social media sites do not allow you to link back to your site. You can usually include your URL in those sites, but it won’t be linkable, which means if people visit your site from those social sites then they’ll have to copy/paste your URL into their browser. Hey, if it works, it works. Right?
To create an instance of anchor text in HTML, all you have to do is put the following code in front of the text that you want linked back to your website:
< A HREF="http://www.myurl.com" >
Change myurl to your domain name. You can link to your home page or directly to an internal page using that code syntax. Be sure to take out the space before and after the opening and closing brackets and include < /a > without the spaces after your anchor text phrase. Otherwise, the link won’t be activated.
If you do this correctly, you’ll have one more inbound link to your website than you did before and that should give you a bigger boost at the search engines.
NOTE: While Grammies Dolls is a real website, for the purpose of illustrating how to create anchor text the above bio is fictional.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 10 of February , 2008 at 11:14 am Leave a comment
Some years ago, clinical psychologist Dr. Glenn Livingston was doing his job, just minding his own business, when - ZAP! - he fell in love with a marketer. His life has never been the same.
Dr. Livingston really likes numbers. And as a result of his wife’s background in marketing, he soon developed a regimen to use Google Adwords to build any business. Along the way, he figured out the “search continuum”, which is a really neat tool for anyone in business.
When people research something, they never do just one search. They search over and over again. Over time, they further refine and define what they’re searching for.
A friend was remodelling his bathroom. Instead of a “Hot” knob and a “Cold” knob, he wanted a balance knob, like a volume control on the stereo. He had been in Germany once and the hotel shower had a knob like that. He really liked it. But he had no idea what to call it. So he started typing things into Google, groping around, and he finally figured out that it’s a thermostatic valve. THEN he searched “thermostatic valves” and found only 6 brands. Then he searched for brands of thermostatic valves. Then he found one. Then he bought it.
That is the natural “search continuum”, and everybody does it. When a toddler first starts to talk, every piece of construction equipment is a tractor. Then he learns what “bulldozer” is. And what Glenn Livingston did was use Google Adwords to devise a method for figuring out the search continuum for any particular industry. When you know that, you can own your market, because whenever someone searches a particular keyword, you know what they will do NEXT.
Sam looks for this. Then Sam looks for that. Then Sam looks for the other thing. THEN Sam buys.
When you know the details, not only can you put yourself in front of the people right when they buy … you can also put yourself in front of people when they’re starting. You can know exactly what steps they are about to go through. You can get their email address and get them on your autoresponder series. You can actually start educating them just ahead of what they would find by themselves. So you can intercept people at the beginning, in the middle, at the end of the sales process.
And when you figure this out for your business, you will have a huge advantage. Your competitors will almost never even comprehend that this “search continuum” exists. They’ll never find it. It may sound like common sense - but at first, it’s not obvious at all. You find it by testing and tracking different keywords in your Google Adwords ads. Watch exactly what people actually do. Then you can know exactly where a prospect is in the buying process, and what you need to say to them next to move them to the next step.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 9 of February , 2008 at 10:54 am Leave a comment
1. Brainstorm with your customers or friends. Tell them you want a video that goes viral on YouTube to promote your business. Ask what they’d do that both promotes your business and would rivet people’s attention. Offer a prize or reward for anyone who submits a video that promotes you, and a bigger prize for the best video submitted. Let them know you’ll post their video to YouTube, giving them full credit.
2. When you do your own video, show your personality. Nobody expects - or wants - a Spielberg production. The purpose is to create a strong bond between you and your audience (or prospects). So as you make your point in the video, be 100% sincere AND show your personality. Do a Google search for “videos that have gone viral” or “popular videos”, etc., and watch them. Those are perfect models. What does that person onscreen do that especially endears them to you? How do they capture your attention? How do they get you excited? What do they do that arouses your curiousity, makes you keep watching? How do they astonish you? Make notes.
3. Attention spans are short. Make your point and get out. Videos that go viral are almost always pretty short - under 2 minutes, for greatest effect. If you have a lot to say, break it up into a video series - all under 2 minutes.
4. If you want your viewer to do something (e.g., go to some url), use Windows Movie Maker (in your Program Files; it came with your system) or other editing software to put that instruction in writing on the screen in the last few seconds of your video. Movie Maker also gives you special effects you can choose from, but keep it very simple. If you get carried away creating effects, you’ll wind up with a mess that nobody will watch.
5. Write down a dozen or more possible titles. This is a critical step. A great title gets you a lot of viewers. A bad title (anything less than great), and you’re dead in the water. You want your title short, punchy, to-the-point. If you can hit their curiousity, great. Don’t try to be clever - most “clever” titles just sound dopey and turn people off. Search online for “free headline swipe file” to give you models for your titles.
6. Upload your video and start planning your next one. You need practice and experience to get really good at this. And you’ll probably need to post several videos on YouTube before you get much of an audience. Meanwhile, include a link to your videos in every piece of promotion you send out. Always encourage people to go to YouTube, watch your videos, and give you feedback.
7. Make a list of bloggers who are read by your target market. Send them a short description with a link to your video. This is another reason you need a REALLY good title! If the right bloggers promote your video, then you have a real chance of that viral effect.
Repeat Steps 1 through 7 again and again. Watch your stats closely to see what works and what doesn’t. You’ll get better every time, and you’ll have a better chance of creating that viral video.
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Friday, 8 of February , 2008 at 12:08 pm Leave a comment
When it comes to social media marketing, there are strengths and there are strengths. For one thing, there are different types of social media and different types of social media marketers. Each type of marketer has a strength they can play to, but most social media marketers need someone else to fill the gap.
Developers are typically technically proficient personalities who are capable of building cool applications and widgets. They are the bells and whistles guys who can make your MySpace page look first class or your Facebook profile attract attention. But bells and whistles without real marketing savvy is just a loud clang with no oomph behind it.
Planners are guys with real marketing genius. They know how to market a product or a service and get attention for achievements. But their technical knowledge is limited. While they can envision a plan and implement it, their knowledge and planning skills go only so far. Without the technical proficiency of the developer, they really can’t push the limits of the social media marketing mind.
Implementers are great at carrying out the plans of the planners and are good at learning the tools developed by the developers. They are not so good at the planning usually. They don’t know how to plan a marketing strategy. They can do all the hands on work that is necessary to make a marketing plan work, however.
A good social media marketing teams should consist of one planner (you can’t have more than one chief), at least one developer, and several implementers. You’ll need someone with the vision to know how to plan a marketing plan and specifically how to put together a plan that addresses the uniqueness of your product or service. You’ll need someone who can communicate with developers and implementers and keep them motivated. For your development team, you’ll need someone who can build practical tools that will play to your vision. You need someone who has no knowledge of “I can’t.” Your chief developer needs to be a know-how geek who will tackle even the toughest of challenges with optimism and be persistent enough to keep trying even against all odds. Your implementers need to be creative and able to learn systems quickly enough and you should have enough of them to accomplish the task you want to set before your team.
One final note: When setting out on your social media marketing path, don’t let failure discourage you. It’s a tough run and even the best marketers in the world have trouble navigating the social media marketing ocean.
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Thursday, 7 of February , 2008 at 10:44 am Leave a comment
(Source) The U.S. podcast audience hit 18.5 million in 2007 and is on track to increase 251 percent to 65 million in 2012, eMarketer estimates.
Podcasting has been on the rise since its inception, but this looks like a bigger jump than one would expect. It makes sense, though. More people are starting to pick up on the potential of podcasting and Internet radio. I believe there is huge potential here for advertising if approached from the right perspective.
If you are in an industry where you can expect a lot of listeners to tune into you each week then you can start your own podcast radio show. It’s really simple. You just need a digital recorder or a computer with a microphone. Download Audacity for free to do your recording and you can do all of your editing within Audacity. To monetize your radio show you can sell sponsorships. If you got $5 per show from three sponsors that’s $15 per week and about an hour of your time for a 30 minute show.
You can market your show through one of several podcasting directories. But you’ll also want to upload your podcasts to your own website. It’s not hard. You just upload them the same way you would any other file. The main things to consider are the capability of your host and how much capacity you have for saving files. When it comes to social marketing, podcasting can benefit greatly.
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Wednesday, 6 of February , 2008 at 10:07 am Leave a comment
Advertising may not be the best way to get new business from social media sites like Facebook and MySpace. The reality is those sites were not designed to be advertising sites. They were designed to be networking sites.
Imagine this: You are invited to a attend a free trade show in your industry. You decide to go, thinking it could be a good way to meet new people, potential business partners, and customers. When you get to the trade show, before you can walk in the door, you are bombarded with purchasing offers and come ons for products totally unrelated to your industry. The people trying to sell you their products don’t know you, they’ve never met you, they haven’t even asked you if you’re interested in the type of product they’re offering. Yet they feel the need to interrupt your focus and try to sell you something you have no need for and have no interest in.
Finally, you make your way inside the meetin. Now you can be at peace. But not so fast. You approach a table to see who is there and find out that it is run by people who are not related to your business or even have a presence in your industry. They are trying to sell you a product. You move on to the next table. It’s a booth and you make some new friends. These people are in your industry and are there for the same reasons you are. You decide to kill some time and hang out. But the moment you walk away from the table you are bombarded with offers from people in unrelated industries for products you have no desire for. Would you go back to that trade show next year?
Social networking sites are for networking. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s a great place to advertise. Your best bet for getting new business at Facebook and MySpace is to set up a profile page and become a networker.  This is best for social marketing. With any luck, you’ll be able to ignore the ads.
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Tuesday, 5 of February , 2008 at 12:26 pm Leave a comment
More than 2,000 users have signed up for the MySpace Developer Platform Forum. I suppose that’s good news, but there have only been 223 posts made so far. This is, after all, the first day of the great race.
The most active user on the forum has only made 15 posts. That leaves a lot of room for someone with a lot of time on his hands to sneak in there and ask a buttload of questions, or provide the answers.
MySpace is entering uncharted territory with its developer platform. Still the most visited social network online, the Murdoch team feels compelled to compete with Facebook on the silliness. All we need is a Super Duper MySpace Wall That Will Talk Your Ear Off. But seriously, if any meaningful apps do come out of the MySpace arena, you can bet there will be thousands of MySpace whores just clamoring over each other to get to the meaninglessness. But then, some of them might actually use a few of those apps to market their businesses. Will you be one of them?
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Monday, 4 of February , 2008 at 12:54 pm Leave a comment
Do you need a developer API?
This is a question that you’ll need to answer for yourself at some point. Many social networking sites like Facebook, now MySpace, and Digg allow users to develop their own user and social marketing tools using networking site’s API.
API stands for Application Programming Interface. It allows users of social sites an opportunity to customize their user experience and the experience of their friends and networks by developing their own applications. These applications can be used at marketing tools to attract new people to your network and to get them to your website or blog. The key is in the skills you use to develop those applications.
If you do not have application development skills yourself then you might consider looking for a developer or programmer who can help you achieve your goals. Such a person can be a huge asset to your social marketing team. Social applications range from the silly to the viral, but if you can’t attract attention to the application itself then you’re not really doing your organization any favors so behooves you to give it some thought before you spend money on hiring a developer.
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Sunday, 3 of February , 2008 at 10:58 am Comments (1)
How much time do you spend networking? Have you found that social marketing can take up a lot of time? How do you structure your networking time?
Whether you are an avid user of Facebook, a mover and shaker on LinkedIn, a MySpace groupie, a member of all three, or a connoisseur of every social networking site online, you need to think about how to best structure your time so that you get the most out of the activity. You need to look at your ROI in terms of time = money in non-pay-off activities like social networking as much as you do in your advertising dollars. So how do you do that?
When it comes to social marketing, there are a myriad of activities that involve time. Some of those activities may translate into additional business for your company, but many do not. For instance, finding and approving friends could lead to earned income if one of those friends becomes a customer, but how often does that happen? On the other hand, leaving wall messages at Facebook could be time consuming with little payoff. Some social networking activities you may find yourself participating in include:
Searching for friends
Approving friendship requests
Sending friend requests
Answering mail messages
Sending mail messages
Writing on walls
Blogging
Creating apps
Installing apps
Designing your page
I’m sure you can think of a few activities of your own. But you have to make sure every activity you participate in pays off in some way. So how do you do that?
First, you should decide how much time you can afford to devote to social marketing each day or week. Can you devote one hour a day? Two hours a week? Five hours a month? Narrow it down. Make sure you count the cost in time in terms of what you can afford to lose without seeing a return. That way, you don’t spend a lot of time doing something that doesn’t pay off when you could be doing things that do pay off. Then, if you see a return on your networking activities, you can start putting in more time where you’re getting the pay off.
Secondly, only spend time doing those things at those places that are getting you a return. If you see yourself spending a lot of time responding to friend requests at MySpace and no business coming from it then you might want to drop that activity. But I highly recommend not approving every request you get. Only approve those requests from people who have similar interests to yours.
Thirdly, focus on your time and energy only on those social networks that will pay off. Everyone doesn’t need a MySpace page. Some people won’t fit in at LinkedIn. If your product or service won’t draw attention at Facebook then stay away from Facebook. You don’t need it.
Granted, many of these things you can’t know until you do them. Try them out. Test them. Measure them. Then decide. You’re the boss. Make some tough decisions and go with it.
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Saturday, 2 of February , 2008 at 11:08 am Leave a comment
If you have profiles at MySpace, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Plaxo, Twitter, 20 different article directories, a handful of social bookmarking sites, and your local public library, you might find a use for Google’s new Social Graph API.
OK, I’m stretching it a bit with the local library jab, but this does look like a cool API. The idea is to draw connections between information that is public on many websites and from various sources about a lot of people. The way Google tells it, you’ll be able to manage your public persona more easily through one source. Is that good or bad?
Well, it’s good if you don’t want to have to visit 100 different websites to change you profile from single to married. It’s bad if you’ve got a stalker.
OK, another fun jab. Sorry, it’s a habit. At any rate, Brad Fitzpatrick has a short video that explains the Social Graph API. Watch it below:
Writing by Brick Marketing Admin on Friday, 1 of February , 2008 at 10:58 am Leave a comment
Now that the cat is out of the bag about Microsoft’s offer to buy out Yahoo!, let’s talk about del.icio.us.
As you know, del.icio.us is the social bookmarking site that is owned by Yahoo! It is the most popular social bookmarking site. Yes, even more popular than Digg. But Digg is much more social and better in terms of social marketing.
For the most part, del.icio.us still looks the way it did in 1999. Not much has changed. You have the capability to add friends to your network, but it’s a little cumbersome to do so. It is very streamlined. No photos and lengthy profiles. It’s mostly just a place to save bookmarks and that’s all its ever really aspired to be. Is it broke?
One might think that being in first place would mean nothing needs to change. But how long will del.icio.us remain the most popular bookmarking site if it doesn’t change? Would Microsoft change it? Yahoo! hasn’t.
I for one think that del.icio.us can be improved. It doesn’t need much. The bookmarking is good enough. But it is a little cumbersome to save bookmarks that you find through others. Perhaps giving users a choice between saving bookmarks and keeping notes on them and simply voting on the bookmarks without saving them would be an improvement. I don’t know what other del.icio.us users would say about that. But I’d like it.
Another thing I’d like to see is a more expansive profile page for del.icio.us users. The ability to upload photos and link to one’s website or blog would be nice. And as long as we’re going that route, why not give users the ability to vote up or down the profiles of other users. By giving people the ability to vote others up or down, del.icio.us can discourage spammers from just bookmarking anything and everything.
Some of the features of del.icio.us are nice, but hidden. You have to really search to figure out how to send a note to another user that you have a bookmark for them. More explicit instructions on some of the features would be nice.
I’m not sure how I feel about Microsoft buying Yahoo! (if it happens), but if it does happen I’d like to see del.icio.us slightly improved.
Social Marketing Journal is a Blog that discusses all aspects of Social Media Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking and Reputation Management for the new and advanced reader. Learn more about this blog.
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