You can spend a lot of time in Facebook and Twitter. Often all that time can go into something more constructive and meaningful. Or at least some of it.

There are two older tools that are getting swept under the carpet a little. You can get an advantage by focusing on them a bit because everybody else is looking for a quick fix. Sometimes the basics are the best place to start.

Public Speaking

Don’t fall for some of the “experts” who say they can help you “social media your way to success”. Consider Toastmasters to improve and refine this skill. If you do presentations, that will give people something to talk about and you will have a better chance of getting somebody talking about you. And word of mouth is important. Someone might even talk you up using a social meda tool.

Check out this article from Craig Senior on toastmaster: No one Needs Toastmasters.

Paper and Pen

I don’t mean writing novels. I mean bring a paper and pen with you all the time. You can get contact information from those who don’t have business cards. You can take notes and follow up where it matters better.

How to set up a Youtube channel

1. Go to your gmail account. If you don’t already have one it’s a great idea to have one. You can have your gmail account go fetch emails from all your other accounts and roll it into one inbox (or multiplein-boxes). It also gets rid of a lot of spam and saves a lot of time because of a tagging system which is better than folders. It has integration with Google+ to boot (a facebook competitor).
2. From there you can create a youtube channel.
3. You can also set up a secret email account. Any video that is sent to this email account is automatically published to your youtube channel.
4. You can upload video to your channel.
5. You can get the embed codes from your videos and embed them in your blog.
6. Other people can share your videos this way too.

Okay now I have a means of publishing video how do I make video?

1. If your laptop has a Web cam you can make video from that. Nothing else require, simply go to the upload page and you can grab video directly from there. There is even an editor built into the uploader.
2. You should already own a digital camera which also has video. You can grab that content from your camera and use that. You will want a small tripod (you can make one) and some extra lights as that makes all the difference for shooting video. The light is more important than the quality of the camera. You should be able to get a descent camera for a hundred bucks.
3. You can edit video using Windows Movie Maker. There are better software packages but that one is free and easy. There are a few available in Ubuntu as well. You can use this to add captions and other special effects to your videos.
4. You can make video out of photos. This is called stop motion.

So what are you waiting for?

The Good

• You can see lots of articles on the front page and it isn’t cluttered.
• Front page automatically adds a picture from each post.
• It has many different formats for each post (Standard, Aside, Audio, Gallery, Image, Link, Video). This has bearing on how the individual post looks as well as the front page excerpt.
• The custom menus allows you to micromanage pages and categories. Even sub pages and sub categories.

The Bad

• There’s an extra step when adding a category or page to the navigation in the header. You have to keep pages and categories in a custom menu which must be updated separately. This isn’t all that bad because the flexibility is quite a strong point. You can still list your pages or categories with a widget in the sidebar of course.  This is barely a bad point by the way.

The Ugly

• When you view a post, the Categories and Tags are not always shown. They show for this blog but not for Siteware, EndlessLift or Mambohead.
• Pagination (paging) doesn’t work properly. Off the main page you can can click the “next” button (at the bottom). It works the first time but if you use it again you’re returned to the home page. This blocks access to the older posts. You can observe this issue at EndlessLift (until I either fix it or find another them). You can also observe the issue at this site but there aren’t as many articles to require much pagination. Same issue occurs when you are doing next within a category.
• Paging issues will damage SEO (Search Engine Optimization) since the crawlers are going to get stuck in a loop and may not see all your content. I didn’t study it too deeply but it might create some bogus duplicate URLs leading to the same content.

Magazine Basic Verdict

In this case the ugly wins.  The problems are too serious for me to recommend the theme.

I went into the forum and found other people are having the same problem. One said they paid 35.00 hoping for better support but nothing happened. I sent a note to the maker through Twitter. Hopefully they get back to me. I found their Twitter address an an article on pagination they wrote. I noticed some more chatter about it. A mention of a paging plugin but it didn’t work when I installed it.

Magazine Basic Theme Pagination Problems

I found this fix. I’m just trying it and will report back.

Small bug fix in functions.php. Go to this line and delete it:

$pagination['add_args'] = array( ‘pw_post_layout’ => get_query_var( ‘pw_post_layout’ )

This may be working. I’m puzzled why the template ships with this bug. It’s the template author who posted the bug fix so why isn’t it in the template?

Magazine Basic Categories and Tags Display in Posts

I have not been able to get this to work. In the four installations I tried Tags are displayed at the bottom of each post but Categories are not.

generalsocial.com: Does not work. Shows tags but not categories. Plugins: akismet, Google+, Google Analytics for WordPress, Share and Follow, Youtube Brackets

siteware.com: Does not work. Shows tags but not categories. Plugins: akismet, Google Analytics for WordPress, Share and Follow, Syntax Highlighter Evolved

mambhhead.com: Does not work. Shows tags but not categories. Plugins: akismet, faster Image Insert, Google+,  Google Analytics for WordPress, Google News, Share and Follow, Syntax Highlighter Evolved, Watemark RELOADED

endlesslift.com: Does not work. Shows tags but not categories.  Plugins: akismet, faster Image Insert, Google Analytics for WordPress, Google Analytics Popular Posts, Share and Follow

Update Jan 7: An update just came down the pipe which seemed to solve the paging issue. I’m still wondering if categories are supposed to be displayed on the posts.

The whole idea behind SEO and social media is so word can circulate without spam right? Here’s a lovely one I received recently at about 8pm yesterday.

I’m really surprised how many spam email I get touting SEO services. It’s a bit of a conflict because if their SEO works so well, then why are they spamming me?

Rubber-Power.com Team,
I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for Rubber-Power.com
1. Social profile is not available in top Social Media websites.
2. Your site has 9 Google back links, this can be improved further.
There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of a WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.
Our clients consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are at the top of the Google search rankings. Being at the top left of Google (#1- #3 organic positions) is the best thing you can do for your company’s website traffic and online reputation.
Sounds interesting? Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you.
—————————————————————–
Best Regards,
Maria Wilson
SEO Consultant
(347) 329-2976
——————————————————————
PS1: This is onetime email and you may ask us to “REMOVE” you from our mailing list.
PS2: I found your site from online advertising but did not click.
PS3: We operate 24 x7. I will be happy to send you links to price list,money back guarantee, client rankings, client testimonials, “How we are different from others?”, and “Why should you choose us?” on receiving a response from you.

Six hours ago, I replied “I’m already at the top of relevant search terms. What terms am I not?”. Their 24×7 response service has not responded yet.

Here’s an older conversation with the same spammer.

Hi Darcy,

We recently contacted you regarding advertising for one of our clients.

We pay an annual fee to you as soon as the advert is live. It is a straightforward process and we work with you to make sure we fit naturally with your site. Please let me know if you are interested and I’ll send you more details.

Would you be interested in selling us a simple text based advertisement on your website Mambohead.com?

Best regards,
Joanna Moss
joanna@moredigital.com

==================================================
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More Digital does not accept liability for any data corruption, interception, unauthorised amendment, viruses and delays or the consequences thereof relating to this or any other email. Any e-mail or attachment is opened at your own risk.

To help protect you, this email (ID-4145069020) was scanned for viruses by Norton AntiVirus.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I probably marked it as spam. Buying links is nothing to do with social media.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Hi Darcy,

Thank you for your email.

I can assure you that we fully support Google in their efforts to discourage unsolicited and crude web-based advertising. More Digital is not a spam advertiser. Our strong reputation is based on our commitment to operating within a solid code of conduct.

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me, or alternatively if you wish to find out more about how More Digital operates please feel free to visit our website at www.moredigital.com.

Or, should you change your mind and you want us to continue, kindly do let me know

Best regards,
Joanna

I don’t normally respond to spam I just wanted to hear an explanation as to how a link exchange or paid link system is a good SEO practice.

By the way TED is something worth checking out.

This is a list of the sites you should know and use according to Julius Wiedemann. I wont say one should use this many tools, but its certainly a good list to poke through once in a while when you’re looking for something for your brain.

CURIOSITY & KNOWLEDGE
reuters.com
research.philips.com
readme.cc.png
podtropolis.com
papertoys.com
new7wonders.com
lipsum.com
thomasedison.org
beelinetv.com
useit.com
submarinechannel.com/titlesequences
visual-literacy.org
cartype.com
captology.stanford.edu
bannerblog.com_au
ge.com
curiosityshoppeonline.com
creativecommons.org
lawsofsimplicity.com
gnu.org
digg.com

GRAPHICS, MUSIC & ARTS
yugop.com
vincent-vella.com
uva.co.uk
tutorialblog.org/free-vector-downloads
tate.org.uk
squidfingers.com/patterns
sohodolls.co.uk
radioblogclub.com
photogravure.com
netdiver.net/illustration
mine-control.com
matthewmahon.com
marcelod2.com.br
magwerk.com
kraftwerk.blocmedia.net
headbangers.tv *
grupow.com/circulo
creaturesinmyhead.com
bernhardwolff.com
arturofuentes.com
alennox.net

E-COMMERCE EXPERIENCE
colette.fr
imaginemusicstore.com
canyon.com
coft1.com
heftyrecords.com
ourtype.be
freddyandma.com
nikeid.nike.com
feelthepower.biz
shopcomposition.com
oneill.com
agentprovocateur.com

SEARCHING & FINDING
trendwatching.com
thefwa.com
springwise.com
scirus.com
scholar.google.com
podcasts.yahoo.com
msdewey.com
maps.live.com
chacha.com
books.google.com

ONLINE RESOURCES
infopresse.com/prixboomerang
rjnet.com.br/2velocimetro_php
vixy.net
kuler.adobe.com
wikitravel.org
thinkingwithtype.com
dominiopublico.gov.br
madehow.com
icp.org
howstuffworks.com
dafont.com
dictionary.reference.com
gutenberg.org
nationmaster.com
en.proverbia.net
del.icio.us
touchgraph.com

TOP INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE CREATORS
2advanced.com
akqa.com
almapbbdo.com.br
artless.gr.jp
bigspaceship.com
d-o-e-s.com
domanistudios.com
eurorscg4d.com
farfar.se
firstbornmultimedia.com
group94.com
heiwa-alpha.co.jp
hi-res.net
lowetesch.com
mecano.ca
northkingdom.com
rga.com
soleilnoir.com
wefail.com