Genuine Online Opportunities

Twitter is a fast growing “micro-blogging” service and social network all wrapped into one. After some bumpy roads & strong growing pains the free service that allows hyper-connectedness & an interesting way to express “what you’re doing” at any given time, seems to be on the fast track now to becoming the next mega success story online.

Twitter was founded by Evan Williams, who is no rookie to bringing creative ideas to multi-million dollar reality. Evan was a blogging pioneer and has created & grown web properties that have attracted the attention of the big dogs, including Google.

One of Evan’s past web projects grew to be so huge, in fact, that Google bought him out for a multi million dollar price tag.

Rather than reclining on a beach chair & sipping Coronas for the remainder of his life, Evan decided to try his hand again, when he thought up the concept of “micro-blogging.”

In all our modern day internet hustle & bustle there’s come a need for brevity… short, to the point, yet meaningful messages.

Evan’s idea for Twitter was a service that not only allows people to post short “micro-blog” entries (by enforcing a self-created parameter that only allows users a maximum of 140 characters per post), but also helps people stay connected through the use of followers, text messages, and @replies.

The Twitter faithful are even coining their own new lingo to describe some of the everyday actions that take place on the site. “Tweets,” for example, are the term used to describe each of your short, 140 character or less, posts to update your Twitter profile.

In this article the aim is to go over a simple overview of the everyday things you’ll need to know in order to get started on Twitter & set yourself up for maximum exposure using this free service.

First off, you’ll need to go create an account by visiting the site and following the easy to follow prompts for creating a new account.

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Everywhere we look these days we see mentions of blogs, bloggers, blogospheres, blogging and so forth. Are you wondering what all the hype is about and whether you should be blogging?

Blogs can be anything you want – practical journalism, an online personal diary, op ed commentary – the options are endless! The term ‘blog’ is derived from ‘web log’ which harks back to the early days of blogging, where simple online journals could be used to narrate anything people wanted. Similar to paper journal people have kept through the ages, the online version could be used to record everyday life details such as what they had for dinner, to how they were feeling that day. Blogs, like everything computer based, have evolved to be easier to use and more accessible to people from all walks of life. Now people have realised they can easily share their feelings and thoughts on any topic with the world!

The medium of blogging has exploded in popularity. You may have heard people talking in non internet media about the impact of blogging on modern culture. Social bookmarking is another often mentioned new phenomenon which incorporates blogging. The types and quantity of blogs on the web grows daily. From blog content matter such as gossip & celebrity news which have huge readerships. Discussion, commentary & community building for an infinite scope of special interest subjects from video games to gardening are popular also.

Blogging is not necessarily a frivolous past time though, some of the most accurate information about the Iraq War comes from people embedded in the Middle East who use their blogs to instantly share their unique perspective and first hand information with the rest of the world. Many businesses use their blogs to advertise special offers, product announcements and other events for their business.

So now that you understand what blogs are, and where they came from, it’s back to the original question.

Should you blog?

You may have heard of bloggers commanding audiences which number in millions of readers and others who have turned the simple exercise of blogging into multi-million dollar income. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that? All you have to do is establish a free blog, write a couple of posts, and you’ll be relaxing with the rich on the beach – right?

Not so fast – a few things to consider first.

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Below is a video tutorial on how to add a Google Gadget to your Blogger blog.

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Flutter is similar to twitter. If you post your message on twitter it will be called “twit” but on flutter it will be termed “flap”. Unlike the maximum 140 characters Twitter allows you to type in your messages, Flutter only allows 26 characters in each “flap.” One interesting function of this 26 character blogging is that it can  appear to a special sunglasses. See this video below.

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Unleash the power of inbound linking.

As I have explained before and repeat often, SEO is divided in two parts:

* On-page SEO is what will get your indexed in Google.
* Off-page SEO is what will get you ranked 1 in Google.

Off-page SEO comes down to all the thing you do to promote your site, but anyhow, it all comes down to how many inbound links you generate and their quality.

You have successfully built your website and it is now indexed in Google, congratulation. Now you may realize that your site may not be ranked at the position you’d like it to be… don’t worry, if you are still asking yourself “how do I become the rank 1 in Google?“, then it’s your lucky day.

Getting a high ranking in Google (and most of the search engines) comes down to how good and how many inbound links you generate.

In this post, we are going to review all the methods you can use to generate those inbound links:

* Search Engines Submission. It’s basic, but it’s a good start. Search engines are a good way to get some basics links towards your site.
* Directories Submission. Like for the search engines, it’s another easy way to get more links.
* Article Marketing. By writing quality article, you can quickly spread your links across the internet.
* Press Releases. Assuming you have something newsworthy to share, you can quickly create a buzz and link spread.
* Blogs and Forums. Commenting and participating intelligently in blogs and forums can help generate inbound links.
* Link Exchanges. Trading links is one of the most common ways to acquire inbound links for your site.

Now, getting links is a good thing but it’s not enough by itself. The link itself must fulfill a certain amount of criteria to be of any value when it comes to ranking value.

That’s right; I consider two kinds of links:

* Links that generate traffic. Those kind of links are just gateways for people to come and visit your site, it is possible that they don’t carry any “link juice” or “PR value” due to some special attributes such as rel=”nofollow”; or simply because they are on a page that is not yet indexed or that is indexed in the supplementary results.

* Links that generate ranking. The main purpose of those links is not directly to bring visitors to your site, but rather to show the search engines the value of your site. The quest here is too maximize your PR value. This kind of link should be on a page with less than 100 links with related content. The page itself should have a related title, be indexed, and preferably with a certain PR value.

Ideally, to optimize your work and the value of your links, you would have links that do both: that is increase your search engine ranking position and at the same time generate traffic by acting as a doorway for your visitors.

Now, regardless of the type of links you are working on, there are certain specifications that can absolutely transform the results you’ll get. Read the rest of this entry »

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