I use a ton of web services that require accounts that you log into.  Most of the time these accounts will be specific towards work or play.  An example being Salesforce.com for customer relationship management for work and Netflix.com for renting movies to watch at home.  However, other accounts cross over into both realms.  Evernote.com and Toodledo.com are two perfect examples.

With Evernote, I can manage most of all the files on my home computer, ideas, photos, etc.  It is cloud-based, backs up to my home computer and I can sync the database to my iPhone for instant access to my external brain.  But it is so handy I like to keep all my work data in it too, such as blog ideas, pricing for our services, proposals, etc.  To access and contribute to my work related data at work I obviously have to login, thus also opening up all my personal data on the job.

Toodledo.com is my to-do application of choice.  With it I can manage all of my to-dos, everything from bill pay reminders, home chores to complete, work proposals to complete and grocery lists of things to buy.  I can set long term goals and assign multiple to-dos that I need to complete before reaching those goals.  It really helps to keep me organized and focused on everything I need to get accomplish and it also has an iPhone app so I can take it anywhere.  But again, accessing this via a web browser at work opens up all my personal tasks on the company computer.

Other services, like Google, can get really deep in mixing home and office – Gmail for home, but Google Docs for work?  Running Google Analytics for business website but have all your family photos on Picasa?  Logging into one Google account can open access to all services you are using with Google.

Now mind you, I don’t have anything to hide, but I do appreciate and respect privacy.  I think that is a common trait most people desire to have as well.

The obvious response someone might say is, “just get seperate accounts”.  Sure, but what complexity that adds to the equation.  Also, you can’t install two copies of the same app on an iPhone and I’m not going to carry around two phones.  On top of that, I pay subscription fees for various web services, such as Evernote and Toodledo – while, these subscriptions are affordable, I have no desire to double my expenses.

To me, it would make sense for web application providers to offer some type of two-tiered login: one user name and 2 passwords: the first password opens only the restricted access data (make this your work data you use in the office) and the other password for full access (for when at home).  Users that prefer just a standard account can still use one password and not restrict data.  Data could be restricted by folders, tags, contexts or any other way an application handles data.  This could also be a premium feature for providers to up-sell.   While I’m not looking to increase what I pay for these services, an extra 10% on a subscription cost to get this added functionality is worth it.

How about  keeping one user name and password for an account but use browser cookies to determine if restricted access is allowed.  Maybe when first logging in you get asked if you want restricted data displayed or not on that browser.  A cookie is then stored indicating what access is available until you log out and log back in.  You could still change the level of access in your profile settings, but would need to re-enter your password before the change takes place.

There are already similar uses of this on sites such as Facebook and Flickr, where you can who gets access to your account postings, but it would be good to have the option for the account owner too.

When promoting your business, an attractive option is to use pay-per-click advertising.  Using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising you can bid for placement in the search engines for the keyword phrases you know your customers are using when they are searching online.  The most commonly known PPC platform is Google’s Adwords program, although Microsoft and Yahoo also have well established PPC programs in place.  While top organically ranked listings are still the Holy Grail of search engine marketing, PPC advertising is a fine way to fill in the gaps of your organic listings as well as offering alternative ways to get in front of your audience.

Description of Click Fraud

The basic description of click fraud is when somebody intentionally generates multiple clicks on the same PPC ad – whether manually or by means of an automated process.  Since you only need to click a PPC ad one time to arrive at the landing page for the ad and each click to the ad costs a PPC advertiser money, these unnecessary extra clicks only serve a malicious purpose – to cost the PPC advertiser more money.  Some explanations of click fraud are obvious – your competitors are trying to exhaust your marketing budget, for instance.  But just like gibberish spam emails, other explanations can also exist.  The important thing to realize, is regardless of the explanation, if you are a PPC advertiser and you have click fraud perpetrated against your PPC campaign, you are being stolen from.

Click Fraud Protection

The search engines have click fraud protection methods in place to minimize click fraud.  The easiest method is recognizing multiple clicks coming from the same IP address.  In this case, these additional clicks from the same IP address are thrown out and not counted against your PPC budget.  This can also protect you from unintended click fraud where a legitimate user is comparison shopping and might reclick your ad multiple times during their session.

Do Search Engines Encourage Click Fraud?

Many speculate that the search engines encourage click fraud as they would stand to gain from the extra clicks as they get to bill their advertisers more money for all those bogus clicks.  I disagree with this opinion, as the search engines know that click fraud dilutes the effectiveness of a PPC campaign.  This in turn diminishes faith in the service and minimizes advertisers and their budgets.  A short term gain from click fraud revenue for the search engines would quickly lead to long term suffering as advertisers jump ship.  That being said, and with the protections in place from the search engines, it is a fact that click fraud still happens as scammers find new ways to beat the system.

How to Identify Click Fraud?

Becoming familiar with how to monitor your campaign statistics via your PPC management console is the first step.  If you or the person in charge of your campaign is not viewing the data, you won’t know what is going on.  Viewing the click through rates for each of you keyword phrases and how they change over time can indicate fraudulent activity.  If you have a keyword phrase that for the past year has averaged a 2.4% click through rate and now has suddenly spiked to 9.7%, although you have not recently optimized the campaign, this could be an obvious tip-off.  If you have conversion tracking in place for your campaign and the increase in click through rate actually leads to a decrease in ROI, this is another obvious clue.  Note that increasing your click-through rate is an end goal for your campaign, but usually happens when you are actively optimizing your campaign.

You can also use data that is external from your PPC management console, such as the statistics tracking tools that come with your hosting plan or Google Analytics.  Checking for multiple clicks from the same IP address or clicks from outside your target market area could indicate click fraud.  For example, if your are only marketing your campaign within a 25 mile radius of your zip code and you are getting an unnaturally large number of clicks from Korea, this could indicate click fraud.

What to Do if You are a Victim of Click Fraud?

The first step is to report it to the search engine your PPC campaign is with.  If the suspected click fraud is only occurring on certain keyword phrases in your campaign, you may want to consider pausing these keyword phrases in your campaign until you get things straightened out.  If it is a Google PPC campaign, you may find that the questionable clicks are originating from your ads on the Google Content Network.  Temporarily pausing ad placement on the Content Network until you can resolve the issue with Google is a good idea.  You don’t want to let click fraud kill your online marketing altogether, but tending to bleeding areas is crucial and can help revive your results.

Ok, Google Wave was just recently released, and I still haven’t gotten my invite.  What is a poor web consultant to do?  Why, search the web for other things that I can play with now.  This is where Zoho comes in.

First of all, Zoho is not new – it’s been around at least a few years now, competing solidly with Google Docs at least as far back as 2007.  I have read a number of articles on it this year, and even ones that proclaimed it to have beaten Google Wave to the scene with integrated conversations, documents and project management.  Additionally, Zoho gets high marks when compared to Google Docs for its more feature-rich and elegant user interface.  But, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of them as they don’t have the household name brand that Google has.  Additionally, Zoho is not an open-source platform, so external developers aren’t going to be paying attention to it like they are with Google Wave.

The first thing that strikes me when visiting their site is the huge array of applications they have.  It is truely amazing.  Ok, I’ve known about the document and calendar stuff – but a CRM service too?  And an online web-conference tool?  Web-email?  Ok, I’m really intrigued and wondering why I didn’t follow up with them sooner.

Just like Google’s applications, Zoho is 100% in the cloud – yes, more cloud computing services.  But unlike Google’s apps, Zoho’s are much slicker – I’m understanding those positive reviews I’ve heard.  While I have very limited hands on to give a formal review, I’ll at least throw out a few visuals that tell their own story:

The main screen for the Zoho word processer

As you can see above in the left side navigation, Zoho integrates all their tools together.

A pretty slick set of toolbars for a web-app

Compare the feature-rich tabbed tool-bar to the more simplistic one from Google below.  To many, simple might be better, but for most business-oriented users, Zoho provides a better web-based replacement to Microsoft Office.

The Google word processor toolbar by comparison

Zoho is one tough competitor to Google in the cloud computing realm, but it will be interesting to see how Google Wave impacts things.  I expect Google Docs to become more Wave-oriented, but Zoho should also benefit from Wave as it brings more attention to cloud computing platforms in general.

Do you have experience with Zoho that you can share?  How do you think it stacks up to Google?

Since Google Wave is expected to have a limited release on September 30th, it is time to get an understanding of what this tool is, how it works, why it is revolutionary and how we might use it.

What it is?

Announced by Google on May 27th, 2009 as a “personal communication and collaboration tool”, Google Wave is the next big “death of email” hype storm.  As an open source application, it is available for others to develop it out via it’s API – much like Twitter with it’s endless supply of third party apps or add-ons for your Firefox browser.  File sharing is native to it so you can drag photos and docs right into conversations – no more email attachments.  Everything is real time with threaded conversations, wiki-style editing and the ability to embed a Wave into your own website or blog.  While definitely a tool that can define the future of online communication, it also could be another layer to the social media onion.

If you want to make waves, you need to get in the pool!

How does it work?

Users create “waves” and add other users to it – much like starting an email to a friend or group of people.  But instead of a back and forth volley or text with attachments to upload and download, everyone shares a common pool of media – text, photos, videos, documents, RSS feeds, gadgets, etc.  New users can be added to the pool and continue to contribute in real-time.  And if you’re added to the pool late and don’t have the foggiest idea what everyone is currently talking about, you can replay the wave from the beginning to watch the timeline of events unfold before you.

Why is it revolutionary?

Currently, our online communications are very fragmented – Email, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Facebook, forums, file sharing websites, social networking sites and more.  Some of these technologies, like email and instant messaging are pretty ancient in their technology.  Newer communications, such as Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites provide a richer experience, but are still spread over a diverse landscape.  You can use third party tools to aggregate some of these web 2.0 tools together (Ping.fm, Seesmic Desktop and FriendFeed to name a few), but none of these wrap the whole enchilada within their tortilla.  Google Wave is the whole enchilada served straight from their coding kitchen.

How will we use it?

The primary use for it of course, is for online communications and file sharing.  Whether you are creating a wave to discuss the football season with friends, share photos with family members or collaborate on a project with a client, it could be the go-to tool that truly does spell the end of email.  However, since it is open sourced for the developer community at large, new uses not yet imagined are sure to be developed – think iPhone apps.

The Google Wave web app

The key is adaption.

The biggest hurdle with any new technology is that it has to be adapted by the general public to succeed.  Just being better doesn’t guarantee the public will embrace it.  Google Wave has it’s own lengthy list of jargon terms and from-scratch approach to the user interface.  While Twitter has gained a huge following with it’s unique approach to communication, it only requires a small learning curve and a few silly-sounding jargon terms to learn such as “tweet” and “retweet”.  Google Wave is a bit more complex and abstract.  There are still lots of people who haven’t figured out Twitter (or email, for that matter), so I see a high rate of avoidance being inevitable.  And if someone isn’t using Google Wave, then you obviously can’t communicate with them via the tool.

So what about this new jargon?

Wave: Since this term mirrors the name of the product offering, it makes sense that it is the primary element of the new technology.  A wave is the full history of a conversation thread or project collaboration.

Wavelet: A subset of a wave – basically consisting of related elements of the full wave.

Blip: Single elements of a wavelet, such as individual messages.  Blips can be private or publically shared.

Children: Blips that are attached to other blips.

Document: A blip’s content.

Extension: Applications that extend the functionality of Google Wave.  There are 2 extension types that can be used: gadgets and robots.

Gadgets: This would be like add-ons that you can install into your Firefox browser to increase it’s functionality and to customize it’s usability.

Robots: Yeah, really – robots!  Basically extensions that provided automated processes.

Google Wave: a stand alone tool or embed it elsewhere.

One of the things that increased the popularity of YouTube is it’s ability to provide embed code that you can use to post YouTube videos on other websites and blogs.  This dramatically helped to spread the brand awareness and site content to thousands, if not millions, of URL’s throughout the internet.  Similarly, waves can be embedded elsewhere on the net.

In conclusion:

Google Wave has the clout and resources of Google, the anxious anticipation of millions and a fresh (if somewhat different) approach to online communication going for it.  It may not be adopted by all – or in my opinion end fragmentation of online communication totally – but it does give us a chance to explore the next evolution of the web.  Even in the unlikely event that it fails miserably, it is already setting a new course that other online applications will follow.

Additional Resources:

Here is a highly abridged version of the video presented by Google on the waves.google.com website.  The original is long – very long.  This 10 minute abridged version sums it up:

Here is the link to sign up with Google for an invite to use Google Wave: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/

They may be good at being social, but they need to work on their bookmarking features.

Ok, here is the setup of my premise:

I’m primarily a Firefox web surfer and for the last year or so I have been a big fan of the the Fast Dial add-on.  If you don’t know what it is, basically it adds a bookmark page to your Firefox browser.  Every time you bookmark a page to Fast Dial, it grabs a screen capture of the page and places it on the Fast Dial grid.  The grid can contain as many or as few rows and columns as you want.  Plus you can replace the screen shot with any image you want to use.  I tend to use the logo of the site I bookmarked, so if I want to go to Facebook, I open a new tab in my Firefox browser and from the Fast Dial grid that pulls up by default, I quickly see the blue Facebook logo and click to be on my way.  It’s fast indeed as it is visual.

Now you wouldn’t use Fast Dial to bookmark all the sites you visit as there is only so much room on your computer screen.  That great recipe for peppered porcupine pie that one day you to plan to make, or the interesting blog article you’ll one day get around to reading are not the things you would bookmark to Fast Dial.  The day-to-day sites you use on a regular basis are what you would put on your Fast Dial grid.

For everything else, you can bookmark them to your browser, but then you have to go back to that browser on that computer to access them.  Yes, I know there are ways to sync, port over and mishmash bookmarks in browsers now, but let’s not pull out all those ‘many ways to cook a porcupine’ recipes right now.  I have looked into Delicious.com a few times over the last few years, but always found their user interface a bit cryptic.  I have tried other services too, but they were way more social-oriented than bookmark-oriented.

Example screenshot of Fast Dial

Now, after building up a pretty big grid on both my work computer and home computer in Fast Dial, recent upgrades to Firefox 3.5 yielded blank grids.  Gone.  All my bookmarks vanished.

So, now I’m back to considering a good web-based bookmarking service.  I have a Google account and have used their bookmarking service, but I don’t like the idea of logging into my Google account at work and leaving all that personal data from the entire Google suite open, plus it’s not visual like Fast Dial.  Hey, it’s a Web 2.0 world, I’m sure some 15 year old has a startup site that will fit my needs.  So off a Googling I went.  I even Binged.  Nothing.

Looks like I need to look into Delicious again.  So I gave in and setup an account.  Guess what – it’s still cryptic.

Here’s my problem with social booking services:

I am a website consultant by trade.  Website usability is a big part of my consulting.  To me, the goal of a bookmarking service is to quickly get to the links I need quickly… did I already say “quickly”?  Yes I did, but let me say it again: quickly.  Start building up a bookmark list in Delicious, or any other bookmark service, and you get lists.  Text lists.  Yippee.

Now with Delicious.com, I can customize the bookmark name, add comments and tag the bookmark, but it’s still a text list.  And tags.  If I can only remember what tag a bookmark is listed under.  Tags are great, but give me some good old fashioned categories too.  If we dropped a site visitor into a website with a large number of pages and said “here’s a tag cloud, have at it”, we wouldn’t have a successful website.  With bookmark tags, there’s too much thinking on the data entry of the bookmark side and too much thinking on the link picking side.

Here’s my solution:

There is no reason a visual experience can’t be achieved in today’s web environment.  And to show you I’m not just here to criticize, here are my ways to allow users to organize their data visually.

But first of all, just to get this out of the way, if you’re going to provide user accounts, allow a custom user profile image.  Why is every person on Delicious a pointy-nosed icon.  There is no meaning for the icon if it’s everyone.  Look at other social websites with user profiles for a clue.

Ok, let’s organize our bookmarks visually.

There are a number of ways to organize visually: image icons, size, color and location.  Let’s start with image icons.

Image Icons: I don’t know what browser you are using, but chances are there is an image icon to the immediate left of the URL in the address bar.  This is the site’s favicon – the site owner has picked an image icon to represent the site.  Since it is a small image, it might be only a part of the site logo or other element, but it presents enough visual feedback for you to know what site it represents.  Now if the site owner didn’t use a favicon for their site, you would just see a generic icon, such as the blank document icon.  Why am I bringing up the favicon?  In many bookmarking tools, the favicon will show next to the bookmarked link.  For example, viewing my Firefox bookmarks (yes, I have bookmarks everywhere) I see all the favicons next to each bookmark name.  This makes it much easier to quickly find what I’m looking for instead of just looking at text links.  Additionally, I have a bookmarks toolbar that I have customized to only view favicons for bookmarked sites (kinda like a mini Fast Dial).  As long as every site bookmarked has a favicon,  I can open a site by visually just by finding it’s icon.  Social bookmarking sites should at the least show favicons for bookmarked sites.  Even better, they such allow displaying a screenshot of the site and allowing users to upload their own images for each bookmark.

Size: While I’m not a big fan of tag clouds, I respect the fact that they recognize that size helps to determine importance of a keyword.  The same would be good for a bookmarking website.  Take the Fast Dial grid idea (which really is the same idea as the iPhone’s icon navigation grid) of arranging your most important bookmarks on your main login page – sizing them according to importance. Not drastic differences, but enough to show certain bookmark links have more weight to them.  Or if you can paginate the bookmarks based on certain criteria, you can view one category of bookmarks and quickly see what items in the category are the most important.   Optionally, you could select a setting that instead of you manually selecting sizes, it increases icon sizes based on how often you visit the bookmark.  I can see a friendly reminder pop up now that says “Hey, this bookmark is getting so small it’s about to become invisible.  You sure you still need it?”

Color: Many online tools let you arrange items by color.  Google Calendar lets me setup different calendars to organize events.  Each calendar can be a different color.  Why not a color coding system for bookmarks?

Location: Whether by category, tag, or individual bookmarks, placing items in particular places is a way to determine the importance of a bookmark.  In Fast Dial or my iPhone, I can arrange my navigation however I see fit.  Certain categories always show on the right and another group of tagged bookmarks show in the bottom left – cool.  Work-related bookmarks always show up on main screen at login and personal bookmarks always require a click to a seperate page – awesome – now users can use one bookmark login for both work and personal.  Or, to take a quick sidebar, how about work-related bookmarks always show up on the main screen and personal bookmarks requiring a seperate, or a reconfirmation of the password to access.  This way, you can login with your same bookmark account at work that you use at home, leaving it open throughout the day without worrying about co-workers checking out your obscure 80’s band video links on YouTube or your vast array of porcupine pie recipes when you head to lunch.

Ok, so I’m ending on a sidebar.

Have I missed a social bookmarking site that does more than I’m giving them credit for?

The sun is rising to light up the skies of cloud computing. And it looks like Google Chrome OS.

Cloud computing is on the horizon.  And despite the jargony term, it’s more familiar than you think.

“Cloud computing”, you ask?

Well, you could consider this blog article cloud computing.  Although you see the article on your screen and you are reading these words, this article doesn’t exist on your computer – unless you purposely copied it to your computer or are reading it from your computer cache.  No, it exists on a server… somewhere… heck, I don’t even know where.  And really, that is the case with all websites – you are pulling up website that exist somewhere… out there… in the CLOUD.

“So if the internet can be consider the CLOUD, then what’s the big deal about cloud computing?  We’ve been on the internet for years.”

Yes, but we are still grounded by our interface – hardware and software that makes that fluffy internet accessible.  However, more and more of the software and content has already been slowly moving to the cloud.

Who here uses Outlook or Outlook Express to view their email?  Or are you using Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or some other online service?  More and more of us are utilizing web-based email.  Instead of using a piece of software (Outlook) that we paid for and installed on our computer to access emails that get downloaded to our computers, we have webmail where we setup a free account and view all our email online.  And it stays online – forever (in theory, anyway).

“Ok, I’ve been using Gmail for years – I’m a cloud computing expert”, you say.

Well, you may be – I’m not here to judge – but we’re still left with hardware.  You know, that big box with the hard drives and the OS installed.

“But I’m on a netbook”, you respond.

Ok, you sipping the expresso, take your rain cloud computing over there please, before somebody gets wet.  But, um, leave the expresso please. Oh, and we’ll get back to you in a moment.

So now that I have hopefully lifted the… well the cloud on cloud computing, you are probably thinking that it seems pretty familiar after all.  But if we’re not entirely there, then what is the next step?

Actually, Google is.

You see, back in July they annouced a new operating system that they are currently developing, Chrome OS.  Now, it had long been rumored that Google might jump into the operating system wars that is currently dominated by Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X, but this OS won’t run on your hardware – it will exist in the cloud.

“But how?”

Well, again, all those servers that house your Gmail, your Google Docs and Picasa photos will also house your Chrome OS.  And that also long rumored Google GDrive, well most predict that when Chrome OS deputs it will do so with GDrive as the online storage solution for everything you do via Chrome OS.

Now, you just need a basic device that has an internet connection and the Google Chrome browser.  No spec’d out processor, no multi TerraByte hard drives, no maxxing out on RAM cards, no OS.  Oh, and here is where you netbookers can join us again – you’re actually the first primary market Google will tap.  But they’ll want some of you expresso in return – they love Caffeine.

As excited as I get by the concept, there are definitely pros and cons to cloud computing.  First off, it is dependent on the internet and the internet’s bandwidth and availability.  Where I live, I can only get high speed internet via satellite.  If you have never had satellite internet, be thankful.  And believe it or not, a decent percentage of internet users are still using dial-up.  I don’t see power users like those that do graphic design, video editing and 3D modeling to be on a cloud computer anytime soon, but for the casual and business user, it just might do.  After all, Google Docs and Gmail is proving that business can be done online without Microsoft Office and Picasa and Youtube can be used to manage large media files.  And having all that content available wherever you have an internet connection is tempting.

Although we have probably hit a point already where we have the best of both worlds – powerful local hardware with unlimited cloud-based applications already online – the simplisity and affordability of cloud computing mixed with the clout of a name like Google, could make total cloud computing mainstream.

Are you still using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 to view websites?  If so, it is time you upgrade.  Internet Explorer 6 (also referred to as IE6) is a pretty ancient browser.  I know it doesn’t sound that old, since the newest version is only Internet Explorer 8, but trust me, the number of years between those two versions is more than a handful of fingers to count.

IE6 can not take advantage of many of the newest web technologies – or if they do, the pages will be rendered incorrectly or be buggy in operation.  Security is not as strong as current browsers, leaving you more at risk to hackers and phishing attacks.  The feature set is also lacking, as tabbed browsing didn’t come along until IE7.  What?  Don’t know what tabbed browser windows are?  See how behind the times you are!

If you are an AOL user, note that AOL uses Internet Explorer as the code base for it’s browser.  I’m no AOL expert, but I do believe IE6 is the platform.  So, AOL users, this post is for you too.

Upgrading to a modern browser is easy, so not doing so is only shooting yourself in the foot.  If you have IE6 and love the browser so much you don’t want to part with it, just point your mouse over to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx to download IE8 for free.  IE is still a good browser, so the newest version will get the job done for you.  However, if you want to live a little and hang with the internet in-crowd, the following browsers are all free to use and are arguably better choices than IE:

Mozilla Firefox – This is THE alternative browser to use and the one with the most market share behind IE.  It is also a fun browser to use with a ton of ways to customize it to suit your needs.  It’s also very easy to import your IE favorites so you don’t lose any of your bookmarks that you built up on IE.

Bottom Line: This has been my primary browser for a few years now.

Google Chrome – Yep, Google does it all!  Last year Google released Chrome and it is a very worthwhile browser to look into.  It is very spartan in its presentation with only a minimal amount of things to click on.  For me, this took some getting used to, but once I did I found it a refreshing approach.

Bottom Line: The browser has been rock solid in the 6 or so months of daily use I have put on it – I honestly can’t recall it ever crashing or freezing up.

Apple Safari – Even if you are on a PC, you can still use Apple’s Safari browser.  I haven’t used this one as much, but the times I did I found it to be an excellent application that is both usable and high in performance.  Version 4 is the newest version.

Bottom Line: If you like Apple stuff, then this one is a safe recommendation.

Flock – Here’s your chance to really be cutting edge cool and start using a browser that most people don’t know about.  Flock is basically a modified Firefox browser than is specifically tailored for social media websites.  You get (most) of the benefits of Firefox (some add-on customizations are not compatible) and a ton of social networking management features to keep you up all night.

Bottom Line: If you spend a lot of time jumping around from website to website while chatting on Twitter and Facebook (as well as a long list of other social media sites), then definitely give Flock a try.

I have at least 3 different browsers open at any given time.   Not that I need more than one, but I like to experiment with what is available.  If forced to pick, right now I’m using Flock most.  But I still don’t have it loaded up with all the customizations that I have done to Firefox.  So, I’ll call it a tie between Flock and Firefox.  A close second is Chrome due to it’s robust nature – it is by far the most stable browser of the bunch from my experiences.  If stability is more important than feature-set, then go with Chrome.

Remember, if you are on AOL, you don’t have to use AOL’s browser – and I recommend you don’t.  You have the same freedom of choice in browsers too.

There are even more choices out there too, but these are the primary ones and they are all excellent alternatives to the out-dated Internet Explorer 6.

Now that the hype has settled and the new website smell has faded, let’s take a look at Twitter and how to maximize it’s effectiveness via third party Twitter tools.  These tools come in various forms; from websites, desktop apps to mobile phone applications, there are many ways to get your tweets in order.

Seesmic Desktop, along with Tweetdeck, is one of the exciting Adobe Air desktop apps to try for Twitter.

Multi-Account Management

Twitter is a great tool, but their website is pretty simple – and that has it’s pros and cons.  The pros being the ease of using it.  For casual Twittering, it handles most of what you need.  But what if you have a personal Twitter account and a work Twitter account – or even more Twitter accounts to promote various aspects of your business.  Now having various browsers open to manage all those accounts at once is not efficient – time for a tool that allows you to manage multiple accounts at once in one user interface.  Their are numerous choices out there, but the ones I recommend looking into the most are HootSuite.com, TweetLater.com, TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and Twhirl.  All these tools are fantastic to easily post a tweet from different accounts without switching browsers or logging in and out of the Twitter website.

Beautiful interface, great features, lots of fun to use - HootSuite is a hoot!

Following more than a few hundred people on Twitter but have only a handful whose tweets you really want to read?  TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop let you group those you follow into smaller more manageable lists.  You could create a list just of family members and friends, just of business contacts or whatever other criteria you wish.  Then you can just view one of these lists so it is easily to see these posts without them getting lost in the Twitter stream.

One of the biggest problems I have with Twitter is having the time to Tweet.  My day is busy and I can’t spend my time at work managing my Tweets.  This is where TweetLater.com and HootSuite.com shine.  You can load up a number of interesting tweets when you have 15 minutes available and schedule these tweets to get spread out throughout the day.  Now you can look like you’re busy tweeting throughout the day!  Busy Twitterers are more likely to gain more followers and get more visibility within their current Twitter network.  HootSuite.com even allows you to track stats of your post’s links so you can find out how many people are clicking on the links you are sharing.

Manage Followers/Unfollows

When you get to hundreds of followers, at some point you’ll realize you are following a lot of people you don’t really need to be following.  Maybe you followed them simply because they followed you.  But their posts have nothing to offer you or are so infrequent you never see them.  You try and track them down in your followers list, but all that scrolling through pages is not an effective use of your time.  With a tool like Twitter Karma, you can easily see all your followers and those you are following on one page.  And unlike the Twitter website, you can see at a glance if the following is mutual.  What’s that, that person you were thinking of unfollowing is not following you anymore anyway – Twitter Karma is a good way to find those tricky individuals that follow you first to get you to follow you back only to then unfollow you afterwards to make their numbers look better.

Twitter Karma is an easy way to manage your friends and followers on Twitter.

Grade Your Performance

What is your influence on Twitter?  How do you rank overall?  Hubspot has a clever little tool to help you get an idea of your level of influence on Twitter.  Go to http://twitter.grader.com to see how you stack up.  This is mostly for fun, but you can pick up some tips on increasing your Twitter influence and find other Twitter users of interest in your area.  Best of all, it gives you a goal to try and beat which encourages more Twitter activity.

Secure Your Tweets

You have to have a backup plan for when things go bad.  That Twitter Fail Whale could surface at any moment and eat your tweets and followers.  Stories have been told of users accounts getting wiped out, either in full or partially, for no other reason than a Twitter technical issue.  So, if you are investing valuable time in your Twitter account, then it makes sense to get it backed it just like any other valuable data you have.  A tool to do this easily is TweetBackup.com.

Share Media

Yep, you can do more than just share 140 characters on Twitter.  The most well know media sharing tool for Twitter is TwitPic which lets you share photos.  TwitVid.io is a newer one that lets you share video.  The video you share can be an uploaded video or one you take on the spot from your computer’s webcam.  You login to TwitVid.io using your Twitter login and post you video to Twitter directly from the TwitVid.io website.  Another cool service is TwitDoc.com which allows you to share files on Twitter.  It works in the same manner as TwitVid.io, but it also has a Desktop Application available.  Say you want to post a PDF document of a business flyer up for your followers to see, TwitDoc.com allows this – just make sure if you’re on the receiving end of a TwitDoc that it’s from a trusted source.

TwitVid.io - a good site to share video on Twitter.

Take Your Tweets With You

On the go a lot?  Have a smart phone?  Then get a Twitter application for your phone so you can Twitter from anywhere.  I can only speak for iPhone apps as that’s the phone I use, but I’m sure if your phone is smart, it has a Twitter app available.  The iPhone Twitter app I like best is TwitterFon.  It is easy to use and even ties into TwitPic if I want to tweet a photo from my phone.  Many of these apps are free, so try a few and decide for yourself.

Promote via Twitter

Got a great blog post or webpage?  Use TweetMeme.com to make it easier for your viewers to retweet the content by placing a TweetMeme “retweet” button on your blog or webpage.  If a viewer likes your info, they just need to click the “retweet” button to broadcast the content to their followers on Twitter.  In addition, your TweetMeme retweets get tracked and if you get enough viewers clicking on your TweetMeme retweet button you will get extra publicity on the TweetMeme website (can you say “Digg.com”).

Build Community

If you really want to connect with your Twitter community, try Mr. Tweet.  This is a great tool for two reasons; 1) you can recommend other Twitterers (people love getting recommendations) and 2) you can get recommendations of other Twitterers that you may wish to follow but aren’t yet.  When you recommend someone on Mr. Tweet, it is recorded on the site and you can also have your recommendation tweeted on Twitter.  Also, Mr. Tweet only looks to recommend people you should follow that have recommendations from others you already follow – in other words, recommendations from Mr. Tweet are really recommendations from those you already know on Twitter.  This leads to having a higher quality of overall friends in your Twitter stream.

I pity the fool who don't use Mr. Tweet.

Got More?

This is a very short list of all the Twitter-related tools that exist.  You may find some that work best for you differ from this list – if you do, tell me what it is and how you’re using it?

Original and now new again Tropicana packaging on the left, new but now old generic branding on the right.

This has been a busy year for companies trying to get noticed.  Now I can understand with the recession and all that there is cause for concern and more reason to bring attention to your business.  But attention alone doesn’t make a customer suddenly what to do more business with you.  There is something to be said about familarity too as well as what kind of attention you bring to yourself.

Eariler this year Tropicana brought attention to itself by switching it’s packaging.  A whole new look brought much attention for this orange juice icon.  However, the attention was not positive.  Amazingly, Tropicana was not able to have the forsight to realize that trading in a premium branding campaign built up over decades with a generic branding campaign anyone could have come up with wasn’t a good idea.  It makes it harder to justify a premium price too if your branding reflects a generic brand.  Customer outcry made them realize the mistake and a few months later, and a bunch of marketing dollars shorter, and the original branding is back.

I’m driving to work and pass by the local Wal-Mart Super Center – what the heck is that funny new logo?  Oh my gosh, did they paint over the trademark blue on the outside of the building?  I just can’t help thinking this is a change for the sake of change without any business reasoning behind it.  I’ve never seen a shortage of cars in their parking lot and I’ve never stood in line for less than 30 minutes just to buy a pack of batteries.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the new branding is just going to further irk detractors and alienate core customers, in my opinion.  Wal-Mart is too much of an institution than a store – maybe more of a tradition as generations of families have been brought up under it’s roof.  You just don’t mess with tradition.  I’d love to see the price tag for this re-branding vs. how much more it actually adds to their bottom line.

How about that new Pepsi logo?  Kinda weird, huh?  Ok, they have always tended to market mostly to a younger demographic, so I’m not going to be too critical of their new branding.  It may not appeal to me, but then again, I haven’t had a soda of any kind in about a decade or so.  I’ll remain nuetral on this one.

Even Maxwell House! New on the left, older packaging on the right.

I dislike their shoddy, overpriced coffee and over-sugared speciality drinks like Frappacinos, but have always loved Starbucks coffee-flavored ice cream.  I mean, I really love the stuff.  But Starbucks has played musical branding  with it’s packaging  – each time getting more generic in appearance and each time I end up seeing less of it being stocked in the ice cream isle at my local supermarket.  Hmmm….  Then, about 6 months ago it disappered altogether from the shelves for a few months.  I must have bought every other coffee ice cream brand known to man when magically Starbucks coffee ice cream reappeared on the shelves with what’s that, yet another packaging design (and what I swear is a different taste too).  Why can’t they just leave well-enough alone – all these improvements are making it worse.

You’d think I was an anti-new-brander by this blog post so far, but I’m really not.  I love pointing to the rebranding that UPS did a few years back.  They took their tradition with them, enhanced their logo and made the color brown kinda cool.  There was no re-adjustment, no “that’s weird” stage – everything was the same just better.  You didn’t fell like you were doing business with a different company – they maintained their identity.

Now these are big multi-billion dollar corporations with established identities at stake, but what about the small business owner?  What is the identity of your brand – do you have a brand identity?

Usually small business owners start on a small budget and logos and branding tends to be at a lower importance level than other factors in getting the business up and running.  But as your business grows, the importance of your branding grows.  As you become more established in your field, your premium rises.  Just as Tropicana can charge more money for their better known, premium orange juice, your rates for your products or services will increase too.  As your rates increase your customers will expect your branding to reflect this new premium.  Tropicana spent a lot of money learning this lesson – don’t expect a premium while presenting in a generic fashion or stripping away your established indentity.

If you are new to the game then you are in a good position to start off on the right track.  Working with a good design team you can establish the look of a premium brand before you really are one.  Upfront costs in this case are more, but you can save yourself a lot of retooling of your brand down the road.

What does your brand say about you?  Are you a generic, a premium, or somewhere in the middle?