The Sunday Share – 10 Google Reader Alternatives

by: Paul Swansen - March 17th, 2013   Filed under: Current Events, Customer Service Add Comment

The Sunday Share – 10 Google Reader Alternatives. There has been much hand wringing and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the announcement by Google this past week over the death of Google Reader.

While I can’t vouch for any of the 10 Google Reader Alternatives, mentioned below, I can recommend NetNewsWireone RSS News reader that I’ve been using since shortly after it began. NetNewsWire was introduced in July of 2002, and I’ve been using it ever since. The best thing I like about the application is it’s interface with another of the company products MarsEdit. In fact I’m using both application is the creation of this blog post. Being a longtime user I can highly recommend the application should you be seeking an alternative to Google Reader.

 

The Sunday Share – 10 Google Reader Alternatives: “

 what does google want to be

As a business resource, Slideshare stands pretty much head and shoulders above most other content platforms.

From presentations to educational content and more, you can find information and curated media on pretty much any topic you have an interest in.

As a research solution, Slideshare offers analysis from some of the smartest minds on the web across all verticals. These include standard presentations, videos, multimedia and more.

Which brings us to this week’s Sunday Share.

 

Every week, I’ll be sharing a presentation that catches my eye and where I feel you might be interested in the information inside. These will range from business to content to social media to marketing and more.

This week, a particularly useful Slideshare from professional blogger Ana Hoffman of Traffic Generation Cafe.

With the big news this week that Google is closing down its popular Reader service in July, Ana shares 10 great alternatives to Google’s service, including a surprising addition to the mix.

It’s short but offers some great options for bloggers and blog readers.

Enjoy.

 

The Sunday Share – 10 Google Reader Alternatives originally appeared on Danny Brown – Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

”

(Via danny brown.)

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Kred Lacks Credibility.

by: Paul Swansen - February 27th, 2013   Filed under: Customer Service 1 Comment

Kred lacks credibility. I recently received and email with the following graphic. Kred lacks credibility.

Now, I’ll admit at first glance this is a nice accolade. However I’m completely inactive on Kred. I’d don’t check in, and while I admit I might have at one time checked out the site, I’ve not done so since that initial time.

Also interesting is that this announcement is for an event that I’ve never attended. That raises the question on just how accurate the information Kred is using for this announcement. While I do follow some friends who have attended the SXSW Conference, I don’t drop everything for the time that the event is going on.

I can only surmise that Kred is in trouble and they’re attempting to bait those of us in the Social Media arena to check out their site and to promote their platitudes.

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The Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook.

by: Paul Swansen - January 9th, 2013   Filed under: Current Events, Customer Service, Digital Media Add Comment
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

The Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook. Admit it, we all have it. I’m surprised there’s no support group established for those of us in this state.

It appears that I’ve had a presence on Facebook since 2007. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not using the platform anywhere near its capabilities. Of course if I only knew what those capabilities were, I’d be way ahead of the game. Over the past 5 years I’ve managed to gather 1,090 “Friends”, posted 39 photos, posted or referred to 114 maps and “Liked” 1,482 pages or items.

I took a look at some Google Analytics the other day and found that Facebook is nowhere to be found in the 130 domains that have links to my site. This data goes back over the past year. Now, I’ll be the first to state that I’ve not been intentional in making sure that I cross post or reference everything done here to Facebook. However, I’ve got links to my site from domains with which I’m not completely familiar, so the word is getting out somehow.

Since July of 2012 I’ve had a fan page or business page for my journalistic and writing endeavours. Facebook in it’s infinite wisdom requires 30 likes in order for me to have full access to whatever it is that Facebook has to offer. So far I’ve had 26 “likes” to the page. I consistently post via the page and the postings are SEO linked and distributed.

I’m not really in favor of spamming all of my Facebook contacts to, “Like” the page so I’m curious as to what the best practices are in gaining more “Likes” or followers. I’m thinking that once I reach that threshold I’ll be able to offer more content and other services. So the question, is what is the best way to approach growing this portion of my social media presence.

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Call for Speakers: State Of NOW 2013 / June 18-19 2013 in NYC

by: Paul Swansen - November 29th, 2012   Filed under: Current Events, Digital Media, Mobile, Social Media, Twitter Add Comment

Now is the time to be considering your travel arrangements and plans to attend this conference.

English: Jeff Pulver, at the Ontario 140Conf i...

English: Jeff Pulver, at the Ontario 140Conf in Kitchener, Ontario 2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Call for Speakers: State Of NOW 2013 / June 18-19 2013 in NYC
Today I am posting the “Call for Speakers” for our major annual conference, State of NOW (#140Conf) to be held on June 18-19, 2013 at the 92nd Y in New York City. For our 2013 event, the core focus will be on business.

So far this year friends have dealt with the Wildfires in Colorado, the US election, Hurricane Sandy, the crisis in Gaza and more. I suspect going into 2013, unexpected events and fundamental shifts in our society will continue to evolve, particularly as mobile communications continues to become even more mainstream.

In the backdrop of these events, social media continues to play an increasing role in how businesses are connecting, reaching out for help, expressing themselves, creating movements, and connecting with brands.

With today’s “Call for Speakers” I am looking for creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to come forward and pitch me something relevant related to their business they would like to discuss from their respective industry sector. I am interested in people who have experienced the effects of the growth of social media in a specific sector and how they feel their future will impacted as these technologies continue to evolve.

Our 2013 event will be taking a look at the continued long term effects of the emerging real-time Internet on business, and systemic changes the worldwide adoption of social media is having on a wide variety of industries and markets.

So please, think about how YOU could contribute to the dialog, and who you may know who would be interested in being part of this event.

If you are interested in speaking at the State of NOW 2013, please visit: http://nyc2013.stateofnow.com/call-for-speakers

The deadline for speaking proposals is: Friday, January 25, 2013.

For information about sponsoring and exhibiting, please free free to contact me.

Happy Holidays and Hugs,

Jeff

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Update – Hootsuite Problem.

by: Paul Swansen - November 20th, 2012   Filed under: Current Events, Customer Service, Twitter Add Comment
Image representing TweetDeck as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

This ongoing issue with Hootsuite has been resolved with my renewed access to the Apple App Store.

Now that I can access the App Store I’ve downloaded Tweetdeck.

With Tweetdeck now being a part of the Twitter Family the UI and its presentation has changed since I’ve last used it regularly. The best part of the change to Tweetdeck, it now I don’t have to do all the update work that I had to do while using Hootsuite.

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Hootsuite Problem.

by: Paul Swansen - November 19th, 2012   Filed under: Current Events, Customer Service, Social Media, Twitter 3 Comments

My name is Paul and I have a problem with Hootsuite. There, I said it and its now out in public for all to see.

I’ve been on Twitter since April of 2007 and I’ve seen Twitter grow and evolve. I’ve grown and begun to make use of the social media tool in more useful and purposeful ways as well. Now nearing six years on the site, I’ll assert that twitter is looking tired and past its prime.

I also note that while over the past nearly six years, there have been great advances in how we interact with Twitter and social media generally. Tools like the twitter dashboards of Seesmic and Tweetdeck are tools I’ve used previously.

I see many of my friends using Hootsuite, and they rave and seem to be very pleased with the features and benefits it has to offer. As I stated initially, I’ve got a problem with the Hootsuite dashboard and have had from day one.

Hootsuite Problem

Across the top of the screen shot you’ll notice the yellow boxes. These tell me how many unread messages I have in each of the associated columns. Then there are the grey sawtooth boxes across the page at various intervals as well. These tell me nothing. They appear to me to indicate that Hootsuite has an internal problem with the associate list feed.

I don’t understand why Hootsuite doesn’t automatically update each of my lists that I have on the display. I seem to remember that both Seesmic and Tweetdeck were able to accomplish this with no problem. I also don’t remember seeing the sawtooth type boxes in any of the Twitter dashboards, desktop or mobile.

I’ve done some searching to find an answer to these perplexing questions and I’ve come up empty. That being said, I also note that there has been a lack of progress and innovation for the next evolution of Twitter and its related tools. Is anyone working on bold, innovative steps for Social Media, Twitter or its related social media siblings?

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Web Traffic, Views and The Bottom Line.

by: Paul Swansen - November 19th, 2012   Filed under: Current Events, Google, Local, SEO, Social Media 2 Comments

If you’re reading this, you’ve then been, web traffic,

Working via paulswansen

Working via paulswansen

a visitor to one third of the web sites for which I write and provide content. At the start, let me say thanks for visiting and encourage you to return.

Having gotten all the politeness out of the way, I have a confession or at least an acknowledgement of this entire web site content mess. I have no real clue as to how to actively and consistently drive more web traffic to the sites. Two of the three sites have very good ad rotation that should you click on them, puts a few cents or so in my coffers and eventually I get paid.

After articles are posted on the sites I do what I can to distribute the article links to all the usual suspect social media sites. This is helpful and does drive some traffic back to the sites. I’m aware that two of the sites for which I write have internal distribution, and so far for the nearly six months of writing, has generated less than $100 combined. Now, to be fair, both of the sites have invited me to write for them and have given me a platform for my voice and for that I’m grateful. I also know that I agreed to a payment plan that isn’t guaranteed, and is reliant on the number of visitors and their ability to click on ads.

Therefor I find it incumbent upon me to be the force behind bringing, engaging and enrolling visitors to the sites.

I’m attempting to learn what I can regarding how to provide compelling content, and providing porn and paparazzi shock photo’s, isn’t an option. I do have a good analytics tool that does give me a great breakdown of visitors views and from where they came. This also gives me a sense of topics that readers are interested in. My presumption is also that two of the sites and their ad rotation is predicated to the content provided.

I might need to take a look at content options driven by trending topics as found on Google Plus or on Twitter. Overall the sites continue to be a work in progress and will continue to evolve as we move through the upcoming holidays and into 2013.

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PR/Social Media FAIL.

by: Paul Swansen - November 4th, 2012   Filed under: Current Events, Customer Service Add Comment

It’s now been nearly two weeks since I’ve contacted a major social media player regarding an issue with using an internet standard url shortener. As of this writing, I’ve received no response to my question other than the standard, thanks for contacting us.

About two weeks ago, I attempted to make use of a standard url shortener used on the internet with Pinterest. I was a bit surprised to find the following error message.

Screen shot 2012-10-22 at 3.04.08 PM

What is interesting is that with some further investigation, Pinterest doesn’t allow you to upload links created with url shorteners from Google or bitly.

So now to find the Social Media Community Manager for Pinterest. Well after putting out inquiries over the social media networks, I received no response. Next, find on their website, a social media community manager. No joy with that search, so now to find their PR/PA contact. I did find a contact and emailed them. What was interesting to find out is that Pinterest doesn’t have an internal PR/PA individual nor a Social Media Community Manager. These tasks are farmed out to a third party company.

So now my initial inquiry which began on October 22, 2012 continues to go unanswered.

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Analytics

by: Paul Swansen - October 16th, 2012   Filed under: Current Events, Customer Service, Mobile, NFC, QR Codes 1 Comment

The amount I know about analytics would barely dampen a thimble. I do know that I should be paying attention to them, and yet when looking at reports, it always appears to me that I need some sort

Delivr.com

Delivr.com (Photo credit: paulswansen)

of advanced degree in order to make any sort of sense of the data.

There is one site that I do trust for their accuracy and the clarity of the analytic information that I receive. The good folks at Delivr.com are just those folks. (Disclosure: I’ve known the folks at Delivr.com since 2003)

“Delivr makes creating, managing, and tracking QR Codes® and NFC Tags simple.”

That’s the headline grabber from the website and yes Delivr.com, does all that and more. While I’m not as currently active in the mobile space as I’ve been previously, yes, Delivr.com does deliver. What I do like about the information available to me is the simplicity and ease of reading and understanding of the analytic data.

I get great graphic representations of data from the larger picture of a content link I’ve created, all the way down to city, state and even operating systems used to access my created content.

I also get a listing of “referrers.” This is helpful in finding out what of the social media sites to which I’m posting are clicking on my content, and therefore worth my time. The great thing about the accuracy of the analytics I receive, is that I can count on the data given to me. Delivr.com uses “Default Location Method is IP Lookup,”for the data I receive. I have come to trust this method of data accumulation for sites I’m writing for.

It cost’s nothing to begin to make use of Delivr.com and their Analytics, QR Codes and NFC Tags, so go check them out today.

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Update: Apple’s App Store.

by: Paul Swansen - August 30th, 2012   Filed under: Apple, Current Events, Customer Service 1 Comment

It’s now been two days since I first wrote about Apple and the problems I’m having with their App Store.  As of this writing, I’ve still not heard anything from Apple Customer Service or anyone from the

Mac App Store

Mac App Store (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Apple App Store regarding this situation.

Way to go Apple.

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