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The sudden increased popularity of twitter and social media in general has created a new avenue of looking for jobs-with the millions of people using twitter and talking about everything it was only a matter of time until this medium could be used for employment.

You can use twitter search to look for jobs but you have to poke around with keywords and it’s more of a hit and miss way of finding something.

Two new services just recently launched that hope to assist job seekers find employment- TweetmyJobs.com and TwitterJobSearch.com

TweetmyJobs.com is a new service that hopes to bring recruiters, hiring managers and job seeks together on twitter

You use your twitter account to subscribe to TweetmyJobs job channels by the city and job type you want to follow then you begin receiving job notifications on your cell phone. If you don’t have a cell phone or a unlimited text messaging plan you can still view the listings on the site. From reading thru the site the ability to receive notifications of new jobs immediately on your cell phone is what sets the site apart from others. In addition if the job opening has been created as a results of the recently passes stimulus package it will be identified as a stimulus job

TwitterJobSearch.com launched this week it’s the first job search engine that exclusively uses Twitter. The site allows you to search for job listings by keyword, location or names. The site also offers additional intelligence when searching for positions.

“We use semantic tools to look at what was said. We then look at what they’ve said before. We then look at who was saying it. If we do this right, we can then figure out why they’re saying anything at all.”

From the search you can choose to view the job, retweet the job to your followers or follow the poster

Jobs are constantly posted to Twitter and there are even twitter accounts dedicated to listing jobs such as- @chicagowebjobs, @chicagotechjobs, @jobshawaii, @sdjobs, @jobangels, @dailycareertips . One of the many I follow is @seojobs . They have 1,967 followers and have posted 5,621 updates or in this case unique jobs all SEO related

Searching for jobs on twitter is similar to searching for jobs on Linkedin but twitter has several advantages over Linkedin in my opinion.

On Linkedin you create a profile and then use the service to search for jobs or other business contacts. For example you find a position your interested in 1) you see who the hiring manager is, 2) who they are connected to and 3) if you have any connections in common or can reach out to someone who can connect you with someone within the organization

Linkedin is not realtime and sometimes people will simply ignore your requests to connect or for information. If they do not know you or recognize your name or organization chances are you get ignored. You can link to your website if you have one or other online work you may have but the interaction is mostly one sided and mostly thru email unless someone chooses to call you

Twitter has the advantage of realtime communication (potentially) and the opportunity for a potential hiring manager to view not only your work if available but your persona and how you interact with others. Social networking both offline and online has become very important in evaluating candidates for careers both in and outside of tech

Twitter also gives you the ability to shine-

For example: your last position was selling enterprise hardware solutions. You can add value by tweeting interesting insight into how and why you were successful or new and notable information relating to this field. find #hashtags that relate to your topics and start participating in the conversation and following those with similar interests and backgrounds

It’s also ok to say your eating lunch with friends or enjoying happy hour because it’s who you are but if your like others who use twitter as a venting mechanism or a place to post endless party pictures you could be making a mistake

I offer the following blog posting highlighting this point The dumbest tweet ever? A major Twitter mistake

A person was just offered a job by Cisco and then posted this tweet:

‘Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.’

Evidently lots of employees from Cisco use Twitter and the following response was soon sent out

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

Another advantage to looking for jobs on twitter is it shows you get it- you get technology, social media and how it can apply to the real world. When your looking for a job you use every tool you can find to help in the process if you are already using twitter or considering using twitter and looking for a job using sites like these should be a no brainer

tags: twitter, job search, social media, careers, networking

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On March 17th, Senator John McCain and George Stephanopoulos from ABC News faced off in what was dubbed a twitterview or more simply a interview conducted over the microblogging service Twitter.

To see the interview you had a couple of options

1. You could follow both Sen John McCain and George Stephanopoulos and read their twits

2. You could search for the interview using Twitter Search

3. You could create a group using a twitter client such as tweetdeck to view the interview

The twitview lasted about 30 minutes covered a variety of topics including AIG, terror attacks and his daughter’s recent media feud. The interview went very smoothly between the two but with any new use of technology there were several problems mainly from a viewers standpoint

The twitview started at 9am pacific time and before the interview started I wondered how best to watch the live event. If I tried to watch the event through my twitter client tweetdeck I would have to view the questions and responses within all my other twitter friends. I also considered watching the event through twitter search just searching for both participants. I could also create a custom tweetdeck group with just Senator McCain and Mr. Stephanopoulos to view only the exchange between the two The event started and I found myself jumping back and forth between my twitter client and twitter search

As the interview progressed it got more interesting as other commentators jumped into the discussion indirectly such as Michelle Malkin. If I would of just watched the two I would of missed this interaction which added another angle to the interview

I remember back to the presidential debates and how Friendfeed a service somewhat similar to Twitter set up a live debate room with comments on the debates streaming live within the room. I feel this was a much better way to watch the event and would of been a better way to hold the interview. This also could of provided a controlled means of possibly taking questions from those within the room

ABC News has posted a full transcript  of the interview on their site

tags: twitter, friendfeed, twitterview, john mccain, abcnews, southwestseo

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Finding keyword rich domains to use for affiliate sites or other domain projects is a slow task that usually ends in frustration. Too many times the only options are hyphenated words, .info, .net or other less than desirable choices. There are several tools that try to automate the process which I have used in the past but these usually required considerable time and effort to extract any useful results

Makewords.com is a domain search site that allows you to search for unused domains in a variety of different ways. There is a name generator, themes, dictionary, randomizer, phrases, spinner and blender search options

One feature that makes this tool indispensable is the phrase search tool or bulk phrase check tool which allows you to paste in up to 100 keywords at a time to check for .com domains or other types of domains

A great combination to find domains is to start over at the google external keyword tool to get keywords to use in the search. You can search by keyword or by domain.

Simply take the keywords from the google tool and paste into the bulk phrase check on makewords. You can check 100 at a time and from here you can analyze the results and also combine the results with the other available tools- themes, prefixes, suffixes, spinner

I have found this to be a great combination to find keyword rich domains quickly and easily

Tags: makewords, google, domains, southwestseo

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Most URL’s are too long for twitter and need to be shortened. TinyURL is great for shortening long links but doesn’t provide its users with any time of feedback or analytics. Enter Cligs- Cligs is a short URL service that gives you access to detailed traffic statistics of your short URLs.

A “clig” is a short URL hosted on the service at http://cli.gs/. .

Key Features of Cligs

It is different from the traditional URL shortening services in many different ways. The key features are:

* All your short URLs are protected by your account which means only you can see the statistics.

* Within your account, you can create an unlimited number of cligs, with an unlimited number of cligs pointing to the same destination URL. This means you can drop different cligs into different sites and watch their traffic evolve over time; for example, two cligs pointing to the same destination can be used one in a forum and one on twitter and then the traffic from each one is tracked by Cligs.

* The service forwards all cligs to their destination using an HTTP 301 Permanent Redirect. This has several advantages, the key one being that the link value is passed through to the destination. Everyone loves link juice!

* Cligs includes a ton of traffic analytics. The available analytics are:

o Total number of hits

o Referral statistics

o Recent mentions of the clig itself on twitter

o Recent links (mentions) of the clig on blogs

o Recent web links to the clig

o Recent mentions of the destination URL on twitter

o Recent blog links to the destination

o Recent blog links to the destination

o Recent web links to the destination

o Delicious bookmarks of the destination

o Total number of links to the destination

There are a lot of statistic sites for twitter but most of them deal with posts and followers a lot of nice charts but not entirely useful. This service aims to provide useful information concerning links posted on twitter.

Tags: twitter, cligs, social media, southwest seo

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Friendfeed debuted live updates during last nights televised presidential debate. The real time view offers comments, posts and pictures at the top of a users feed as they are posted.

For last nights debate over 500 people joined the 2008 debate room and participated in live real time comments as the debate was going on.

Once the debate started rolling the comments were coming in so fast it was hard to read most of the comments and follow the debate

The live view works for every list and view on Friendfeed

It’s fun to watch and experiment with new services aimed at capturing comments real time on events as they happen. This is the wave of the future and over time will evolve into something that is part of everyday life

Tags: Friendfeed, live blogging, social media, southwest seo, twitter

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Tweetlater is a useful tool for managing a single or multiple twitter accounts. Tweetlater lets you set a schedule to send tweets and also allows the setup of auto welcome and auto following

The ability to set up delayed twitter postings makes most people think of spam or abuse of the system. Delayed tweets do have a legitimate purpose. There are a lot of times you cannot send tweets and want to update where you are at or what you are doing such as attending a conference or some other meeting where maybe it is not appropriate to send tweets

The real advantage of this service in my opinion is the auto responder you can set up for new followers.

The ability to create auto responder messages for new followers. When someone follows you on twitter you can

• Automatically send a welcome message

• Publish a tweet that welcomes new followers

• Automatically follow back new followers

It will be interesting to see if capabilities such as this eventually get rolled into standard twitter option

Tags: twitter, tweetlater, social media, southwest seo, auto responder

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It’s hard enough generating leads and business but when you have to do estimates and invoicing and accept payments from clients it seems an impossible tasks. How many times have consultants froze in their tracks when a client asks them for a quote or an estimate or mail them an invoice?

Clients big and small judge you on your professionalism not only from the first meeting and your actual work but from all the small details of how you handle them as a customer from start to finish

Companies Big and Small need documentation, bids and invoices not only to get approval and funding but also for tax purposes

Enter Freshbooks- Freshbooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service developed to save you time and make your business look professional

Freshbooks Features:

• Easily create, send and manage invoices

• Streamline your business through recurring invoices. Set up auto-billing to automatically charge your client’s credit card.

• Track time and expenses

• Send invoices by snail mail or email

• Accept payment with paypal, authorize.net and other services

• Automatically send invoices & late payment notices

• Look like a pro and impress your clients by giving your clients online access to their invoices and account history

• Automate late payment reminders to your clients

• For a nominal fee send snail mail invoices straight to your clients. Each invoice is printed with your logo and includes a return envelope for the client’s convenience.

• Generate invoices based on time, expenses, and fixed cost services/items or any combination thereof.

A few days after I signed up for Freshbooks I got an invoice in the mail from Freshbooks. I’m thinking why am I getting an invoice I’m using the free trial. Upon closer examination it’s a sample invoice from me a sample invoice a customer of mine would receive in the mail complete with return envelope. Impressive!

The only feature Freshbooks is missing is an iphone client to enter in expenses and other items on the go

If you’re in need or a client billing/invoicing solution give Freshbooks a look

Tags: freshbooks, invoices, time tracking, web 2.0

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Yahoo Searchmonkey is a way for developers and site owners to modify Yahoo search listings in a way never before available.

With SearchMonkey, site owners create “applications” for Yahoo search that can be installed by users in the same sense that Facebook applications can be installed.

Instead of search results consisting of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of information buried in websites — reviews, images, deep links, and all other kinds of other useful data — directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.

Here is a before and after example of a modified search result for a listing in Yelp.

The service was until recently in private beta and users had to install the add-ons to see enhanced search results. The majority of users don’t take the time to customize aspects of their browser and search options for google or yahoo so the appeal of this beyond developers was pretty limited

Yahoo! recently turned on several of those applications (Yahoo! Local, Yelp, and LinkedIn) for all searchers by default.

Now anyone can customize their Linkedin and Facebook results to appear like mine below hopefully in the near future more services are turned on by default enabling a better search experience for all users

Tags: yahoo, search monkey, southwestseo, seo, linkedin, facebook, yelp

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I am a big fan of the book Groundswell and almost all research I can get my hands on concerning social media and how to apply these concepts into companies big and small

Groundswell is a step by step blueprint on how to implement a social media strategy in your organization. The book focuses on social media strategy and reveals why starting with technologies is a mistake

An interesting quote from the presentation that rings true in most situations- companies jump into social media without knowing what they want to get out of it.

Companies know they need to have web sites, blogs, email and be involved in social media. The problem is most organizations try to solve the problem by throwing up sites or technologies rather than addressing what it is they wish to accomplish and the results they are looking for

The presentation mostly followed the book with updated examples. I enjoyed the video from http://bringtheloveback.com/ a video showing how out of touch the advertiser is with the consumer and what the consumer wants to see out of the advertisers he/she deals with

Another excellent set of points from the presentation was how can companies measure ROI from social media campaigns and activities. The concept of Micro Metrics was discussed. Companies can use micro metrics to measure social media campaigns in terms of customer involvement vs. revenue

Sample Micro Metrics can include:

# of customer feedback

# of comments

# of referrals

# of issues addressed

# of implemented ideas

The presentation was a great refresher for the book and I now have a signed copy! Thanks Charlene!

Tags: Groundswell, social media, Tempe Center for the Arts, Southwest Seo

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FriendFeedSpy is a new beta service similar in nature to Twitter search. The difference between the two services is instead of searching for information based on keywords or users it is a live view of posting activity on FriendFeed.

You can filter the information posted by users into different categories news, bookmarking, video, photos, blogging, books, music, status,

In my opinion the strength of services such as this is research. Simply put services like Twitter Search and FriendFeedSpy allow real time views of information posted by thousands of users which in turn can be used to discover new services, trends or comments on just about anything

Recently I’ve been using twitter search as a means of gathering input on new products and seeking comments on quality of service. Previously one had to sift through search results or find relevant forums and read endlessly to find answers and opinions on different products and services

Hopefully this service develops to the point where you can narrow down the information by keyword or user

Tags: twitter, friendfeed, social media, twitter search, southwestseo

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First Anderson Cooper started blogging and taking blogger questions live on his newscast now a new show on CNN is here interacting live with twitter- CNN Newsroom with Rich Sanchez weekdays at 12pm PST

Now Rick Sanchez has a daily newcast integrating Twitter into the show. Viewers can twitter comments and opinions about live news of which many are read right on the air from a giant screen featuring twitter right in front of Rick Sanchez’s anchor desk

CNN got Twitter to lift the following limits for his account and he already has 12,819 followers plus if you follow Rick he follows you right back

There have been many examples of Twitter making inroads into mainstream media around major events such as the Oscars or Super Tuesday but this is the first daily interaction on a news channel watched by tens of millions of people a day

The question ultimately becomes has the mainstream media really grasped the principal behind social media tools like Twitter?

Social Media is a lot like web sites most companies realize they need one or need to participate but spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to engage and worry about the downsides

Regardless of what anyone thinks or your political views this is a major step forward for social media and CNN should be applauded for bringing this format to live television

Tags: CNN, Social Media, Twitter,

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Ispionage.com is a new pay per click competitive intelligence tool that allows marketers to set up competitive alerts tied to keywords or ads across the three major advertising engines.

When I first saw this tool I thought of keyword elite and all the other keyword tools that have appeared over the past year such as keycompete.com, keywordspy.com and spyfu.com to name a few

At first glance signing up and viewing the training materials it seems this tool handles all aspects of pay per click marketing from generating related keywords to researching competitors and discovering not only other similar ads but the keywords other advertisers as using

Ispionage is broken down into three main areas projects, alerts, and keyword toolsYou create a project to monitor keywords. The free version allows you to get a feel for the system and monitor 35. The keyword tab will tell you how many ads for that keywords across google, yahoo and msn and how many days that particular keyword has been monitored

The strength of this tool is it’s alerting capabilities. You can set up alerts tied to keywords and/or advertisers

For projects you can set an alert when new advertisers that use any of the keywords in your list on all or selected search engines.

• Alerts you to new advertisers in your territory

• Alerts you to URL trademark infringement

• Alerts you to new advertiser ad copy

• Alerts you to new advertiser keywords

You can also set up alerts when selected advertisers add new ads or new keywords. These alerts can be sent up to six different email addresses. You can also set up mobile alerts if you choose

Most tools charged a high monthly fee usually between $39 and $99 a month for a set amount of keywords to monitor

Ispionage.com has three pricing levels from $39 to $79. to get the competitor alerts you must sign up at the $59 a month level

The tool is great for affiliates or search publishers that need to monitor trademark keywords across google, yahoo and msn. The tool sends out alerts when ads appear using the selected keywords. This saves the unpleasant chore of sifting threw the three engines looking for advertisers violating trademark bidding or trying to manually monitoring the three search engines for specific keyword or ad use.

Tags: ispionage, ppc, alerts, ppc competitive intelligence

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Twitter is now being used as a method to discuss special events as they are happening. During this years Oscar broadcast twitter is being used to discuss and evaluate the oscars among thousands of twitter users

By including the phrase “#aa08″ in your tweets or twitter messages a mashup is created with twitter users commenting on the Oscar broadcast. This mashup is created primarily by Twemes

Twemes.com as described from their website: “follows public Twitter.com tweets (messages) that have embedded tags that start with a # character. These are sometimes called hashtags but we like to use the term twemes.

Through the use of twemes, we can all view what people are talking about across the whole Twitter universe.

Twemes.com is particularly useful for keeping up on the real-time activities associated with a live event such as a conference. People who attend an event can choose an obvious tag (i.e., sxsw for South by Southwest) and use this tag as #sxsw in tweets, sxsw in uploaded Flickr photos and Del.icio.us links. “
This is an exciting time in social media watching the medium be defined by not only the tools and their uses but also by watching events such as the oscars and how social media enhances the events and draws participation
Tags: social media, twitter, twemes, oscars, academy awards

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What is twitter? What is twittering? why do people do this and what type of person is most likely to twitter. Every time I’ve tried to describe twittering and tried to show examples of twitter I’ve gotten blank responses and been labeled as a nut. I have also made the wrong assumption of thinking just because someone is young say in their 20’s is into twittering or understand social media. This is a bad assumption and has even gotten worse responses.

So what is Twitter? what is twittering? why do i do it and why does anyone care or why do I try to recruit people to twitter?

Twittering is defined as microblogging. Microblogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by members of the social group
These message can be submitted by a variety of means from mobile updates, instant messenging, email, mp3, video or the web

Most microblogging is broadcasted and attracts other users with similar interests. Microblogging is all about self expression. Entries are typically individual commentary on subjects ranging from anything under the sun- many users describe what they are doing at any exact moment from shopping to attending events to deciding what to wear for the evening. Others are more focused and use the service to post links to their sites or draw attention to posts they have made on their websites or blogs. It’s these posts that attract other users with similar backgrounds and interests- these users then decide to follow the posts.

Microbloggers or twitters can friend, follow or fan other account owners to receive updates similar to adding connections on a social network such as facebook.

Users can also direct message one another thru these services or what has become popular direct comments at a particular user by using a @ sign before their username not only to communicate with that user but also highlight the communication with other members of the group

Others uses of twitter

• Ask questions, advice, directions or for feedback from your group
• Offer resource information to peers
• Promote your projects, products and updates
• Drive awareness to something of interest to a larger community
• A channel of discovery, trends, sites & breaking news

So with all that said what is twitter and why do i twitter?

It’s a form of self expression I use to communicate with others within my social network. I use twitter to document my life and work and help create a brand for myself for others to see.

A term I just recently became acquainted with is social media optimization which I believe goes hand in hand with microblogging and twitter in general. This is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media.
when you twitter, blog, post pictures or use other forms of social media you are inviting others into your life to view, comment and ultimately approve or reject

When I began researching microblogging I found that what I had imagined was true, microbloggers are not necessary young they are more often male and more affluent than average typically 78% male and 31 years old. These users are typically early adopters on the bleeding edge so to speak.

Now that I have researched my obsession and understand the reasons or at least explanation behind this am I really prepared to explain this to someone now? Only time will tell and I’ll be here to twitter about it
Tags: twitter, social media optimization, microblogging, twittering, facebook, social media

Technorati Tags: microblogging, social media optimization, southwest seo, twitter

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Google teamed up with Twitter and Twittervision to offer a unique mashup for Super Tuesday. Tweets related to Super Tuesday were overlayed on a map showing the tweet, the user and their location along with other election related data including videos and actual voting results

This was an amazing use of social media and what I enjoyed the most is for everyone who struggles to explain what social media is and why people use it this is a great example you can point to

Tags: twitter, twittervision, google maps, super tuesday

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