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Looking Back at 2008 and Ahead to 2009

crystalballbitterjugTaking a look at predictions I made for 2008, it seems they were pretty close to reality.  To summarize:

  • Business websites will increase the range of information they offer offer on their sites, starting to include more audio and video.
  • Business websites will include more user generated content.
  • Community and social networks will be important to the business community.

These may not have been all that hard to predict, but social networking has really taken off in 2008 for business use.  Not only have LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. grown in use, but so have smaller, more niche social networks.

So what about for 2009?

We’ve recently seen Twitter use explode among business users.  There are still some industries where useage is small, so I’d expect Twitter to continue to grow.  Look for it to be integrated into all sorts of social networks, websites and new applications.  While it already has been incorporated into many of these, I think it will continue to be used in new and interesting ways.

Blackberries, iphones, the google phone, etc. have increase competition for very smart phones which allow browsing on the web and interaction with websites via phone applications.  This trend will continue and many larger business sites will start seriously providing mobile versions of their sites and services.  This has already started to happen, but I think the trend will vastly increase to the point that even smaller sites will start to explore this medium.

Due to the recession I think we’ll see more business websites spending a bit more time providing more content – in the form of blogs, video, audio and ways to interact with their customers.  Sales may be down, which means a bit more time to spend on tasks that have fallen to the wayside.

What are your predictions for 2009?

(photo by Bitterjug @ Flickr CC)

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Finding Twitter Influencers to Follow

influence4rbReader Steven Woods had a great question that I think might be useful to others, so I’m sharing it in a post (thanks for the question,Steven!):

Have you seen any good tools for understanding who is the most influential in a given subject? Measurements and/or ranking of network/relevance/retweets?

Here are a few tools that can help find the influencers for a subject or in your network:

Mr. Tweet will analyze your network and followers and suggest who you should be following back as well as influencers outside of your network.

TwitterGrader will give you a suggested list of people to follow based on keywords in your own tweets.

Twellow won’t necessarily give you influencers, but it is a directory of tweeters by subject, so it can help you find people in an industry to follow.

TweetScan, TwitScoop, TweetDeck and Twitter all give you the ability to search on a keyword and see what people have said about it. I happen to monitor a few keywords using TweetDeck and have found it useful for finding new people to follow and connect with.

If anyone has any other tools or methods, please feel free to share.

(photo by 4RB @ Flickr CC)

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8 Places to Syndicate Your Business Content

broadcastsoundman1024Now that you understand RSS, you can use it to syndicate your content to other places on the Internet.  Part of your content strategy should be syndicating or publishing your content in multiple places online.  The more places you can use the same piece of content, the more return you’ll get for your effort. Here are some places to consider:

  1. Twitter – Using Twitterfeed you can automatically tweet the title and a link to any of your content (website, blog, delicious) that has a RSS feed.
  2. LinkedIn – LinkedIn has added the ability to add blog and twitter content (both of which have RSS feeds) right to your LinkedIn profile.
  3. FaceBook – There is a Twitter application that will send your tweets right to your Facebook page (as status updates) and with Notes you can have any RSS feeds show up as well.  If you create a page for your business, you can have your content show up there as well.
  4. BlogCatalog – A social network to connect with other bloggers, use your rss feeds to syndicate content from twitter, your blog, delicious, etc.
  5. MyBlogLog – Another social network to connect with other bloggers.
  6. FriendFeed – An easy way for your friends and connections to see all of your content from various sources in one place.
  7. Plaxo – A Business social network, you can syndicate content from your blog, twitter, etc. using your RSS feeds.
  8. Your Social Networks – Many social networks will allow you to add a feed to your content.  If not, consider copying and pasting your content to show up on your social networks.

The more places your content is, the higher chance you’ll be able to provide some useful information to a potential customer.  Keep in mind that your content needs to be useful to others – not just marketing or PR.

(photo by soundman1024 @ Flickr CC)

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