Some head for online media, others to be entrepreneurs, other former journalists land in state government http://nie.mn/gXkZZW

The second screen: The iPads not just disrupting print, but also TV as we know it http://nie.mn/gzJ2ad

STILL cant figure out the Knight News Challenge application process? Heres a walk through http://nie.mn/e10AW3

Its official: YouTube now has adsyou can skip http://nie.mn/gbygrn

With SEO You replace the journalist with the search algorithm. http://nie.mn/fIdGPA

Sure NYTimes has worked with Amazon and Apple for new media inspiration, and now, Weight Watchers http://nie.mn/f0nIs6

Think starting that nonprofit for news will be easy? Not so fast. Learn the rules, options and ways of making money http://nie.mn/hoDLfk

RT @marshallk: 5 min video on how journalists can use Open Heat Map to tell stories with geodata, from @petewarden http://bit.ly/eanmmu

Conde Nast, Hearst, News Corp and more combine to launch digital newsstand for eReaders, no word from Apple yet http://nie.mn/i7P7w8

The redesigned NewYorker.com offers easier reading, more images and navigation less like a magazine http://nie.mn/gOI3fy

WinerLinks in the NYT! And other new UX features, courtesy of @donohoe and @timesopen http://nie.mn/gB1KgG

–>

Whenever dealing with social network accounts you should always treat them as you would with a website. By optimising them correctly you have just as much chance to rank highly in search engine results as websites would.

A few SEO tips to consider with your Twitter account are as follows:

Ensure you have your URL visible in your profile, it doesnt take long to type in and will help other users find your website.

Choose an appropriate use name for your Twitter account. By choosing an irrelevant name you will lose any chance of ranking in search results for your chosen keywords.

Make sure that you optimise your description by including your chosen keywords. Your description is used as the meta tag information for your profile so by including your keywords you are more likely to be found.

Your background can be used to display more information. Youre allowed to upload any background image you like so by including information about your services or company in the image you will be able to get more information across to visitors.

Converse with your followers by asking and answering questions. By showing a human controls the profile people build more trust towards your Twitter profile.

Not many people know that by using hash tags you will help your profile be found by other users. By placing a # next to keywords such as SEO your tweet will appear in search results for that keyword when searched.

Your number of Twitter followers compared to the number you had hoped for at a certain point can help to inform you of how well you are using Twitter for your business. If you are on target with your number of followers or have more than you had planned, this is a reassuring sign you are using Twitter effectively. You should continue what you are doing in order to gain more exposure for your business and direct more traffic to your site. If you do not have as many followers as you had planned, changes need to be made to the way you are using Twitter and more effort is needed.

If struggling to get your business noticed using Twitter, work more closely with your SEO specialists to get advice and tips for how you can improve. It may be you need more interesting content, you need to interact more with others on their profiles or that you are just not updating your Twitter page regularly enough. There are many things which can be done to help you to use Twitter more productively and SEO consultants will be able to provide you with this information.

At SEO Consult, we use Twitter as part of the SEO campaigns of numerous clients. Social networking is of great significance in SEO at the moment and Twitter is extremely popular. Working with us, you will be able to create and update a Twitter profile which will attract many followers.

If you dream of making an income online then this information is very valuable to you. Using new software called Tweetomaticprofiteer and your Twitter account you can generate some potentially large earnings relatively fast.

The Internet is a huge resource, constantly millions of transactions are being made every second, people buying trading and exchanges goods like in a high street shop but much bigger. Tapping into this is easy when you know how.

The best way to tap into this ‘make money online’ market is by a huge social network where you can reach people easily. Twitter is the perfect place.

So how do you actually make money? Well, in a nutshell Tweetomaticprofiteer explains everything but you are targeting the vast audience of Twitter with digital products and services which you can receive high amounts of commission each sale. The best part about it is that these don’t need to be your own either. It may sound complicated but everything can be set up within an hour or so.

Online PR News 18-March-2010 SEO Social Media marketing strategy firm provides tips, techniques and strategies designed to enhance the viral marketing results of using Twitter. This information applies whether to accounts with a few hundred followers or several thousand. These 10 Tweet tips are for companies and online entrepreneurs who are either new to Twitter or not seeing the desired viral marketing return for the time they are investing.

For additional articles on Social Media relating to Twitter, Facebook, Viral Marketing and Search Engine Optimization visit: Irbtrax.com-SEO-Social-Media-Marketing

To view a release that compares 15 key Social Media and viral marketing benefits of Twitter verse Facebook visit:

Facebook-vs-twitter-social-media-marketing-strategy-results-analysis

1- Search for and follow people or businesses that share mutual interests. These are the people that will be more inclined to re-Tweet submitted material providing it’s unique, relevant, or important. They are also more inclined to follow in return.

2- Unique, relevant, or important material consists of articles personally written by a company or individual. Or news stumbled on thats believed to be of interest to an accounts target audience. Just as Google continuously mentions ‘user search’ experience Twitter users should continuously think ‘follower search’ experience.

3- Try to maintain a ratio of around 50% between original Tweets and re-Tweeting whats streamed on the home page. People appreciate original material and its more likely to help maintain a loyal following.

4- Don’t re-Tweet for the sake of re-Tweeting. Every Tweet sent out is a reflection of a person or businesses online image. However, failure to re-Tweet can be perceived as being self centered.

5- Make sure to follow a useable format for re-Tweeting. Tweets that use up all or almost all of the 140 character allotment have proven to receive far less re-Tweets. Additionally, truncated Tweets dont look professional.

6- Add a concise and clear explanation of what the tiny URL contains and keep it to under 130 characters if possible. This allows for accounts with long hash tags to re-Tweet material without concern that it will get truncated.

7- When writing an article or Blog make sure it has a share mechanism or contains a link to your Twitter account. For instance, the Irbtrax Twitter account is:

http://Twitter.com/IrbtraxSeo

And the Online PR News Twitter account is: http://Twitter.com/onlineprnews

8- If providing a business service or product. Limit the number of personal Tweets submitted. Personal Tweets would be social tweets directed at a specific individual or Tweets about what was eaten for lunch. If necessary create a personal account for this activity.

9- Don’t add a question marks (?) or other attempts to engage after the majority of submitted Tweets. People get desensitized by them and a failure to respond to someone who attempts to answer them can be perceived as insincere.

For additional articles on Social Media, SEO, and other related categories visit the Irbtrax website displayed below the ‘Media’ section of this release.

About: Irbtrax provides specialized Social Media Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Market Research Solutions for businesses seeking a competitive advantage. Including optimizing your on and offsite Web Marketing efforts and using traditional methods in non traditional results oriented ways.

This release was SEO and Social Media enhanced by Irbtrax in cooperation with www.Onlineprnews.com

When starting a Twitter Campaign it would be prudent for you to first visit Twitter and search for the keywords that are related to the niche that you have or the demographics or audiences or internet users that you are targeting. Gathering data such as the most effective keyword that targets your desired demographics would help ease your Twitter campaign by focusing on large communities or number of people.

Use the find people option of Twitter in order for you to locate the persons that you think would be worth following, this is because of the fact that the follow feature of the microblogging site allows you to be seen by such persons followers giving you the opportunity to expand your network.

Once you have already had your Twitter account fully set-up you can now start updating your tweets, one main reminder with regards to this is that you have to have a system or sort of an organised way of updating your tweets and keeping them fresh because of the fact that twitter users are more interested in fresh and relevant tweets.

Source: www.seopositive.com

By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can
detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter.
Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody
clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

Initially the service would be rolled out on direct messages he said, since
these were the most likely to be used for phishing and other scams. Such
messages are usually sent out when a Twitter account becomes compromised by
malware distributors.

A URL scanning service for social media sites was
widely
discussed at this years
RSA
2010 conference, which was held last week. Security professionals are
becoming concerned at the
increasing
volume
of malware attacks using social media, which seek to capitalise on the trusted
nature of such communications.

Source: www.v3.co.uk

A direct message from the hacked PCC Twitter account. (Do NOT follow the link.)

Thousands of Twitter users have seen their accounts hijacked after a viral phishing attack which sends out messages saying “this you??” or “hey, i’ve been having better sex and longer with this here” and other sex-related “direct” messages.

Among those who fell victim were the Press Complaints Commission and the BBC correspondent Nick Higham – and the Guardian’s head of audio Matt Wells.

Update: other victims included Ed Miliband, the transport minister.


Update 2: And First Direct, the bank, which hurried to assure people that “Only our Twitter account has been hacked” and that “no personal data has been compromised”.

The purpose of the attack, which began early on Thursday morning, is initially to draw people to the sites that hijack the accounts, and possibly install malware able to steal passwords on the user’s computer. Another purpose may be simple identity theft: because people often use the same passwords and usernames on multiple services, getting access to one service can provide access to others too.

But in the longer term, the purpose may be to put the infected sites into search engine results.

The web security company F-Secure suggests that “We think it could have something to do with some of the recent search engine deals that have been made. Yahoo announced that they’ll begin to include Twitter’s real-time feed into their search results and Facebook is now included in Google’s search results. The bad guys can use social networking trust to enhance their SEO [search engine optimisation] attacks.”

Even results from hot topics may lead to scams and infected sites, F-Secure warns: “Always be careful when searching for hot topics. This “sea world trainer killed” example is currently being used in SEO attacks and many results will lead directly to scamware.” It adds: “We expect to see fresh phishing attacks against Facebook before too long.”

Twitter’s status blog last night warned

“While simply receiving this message does not mean your account is compromised, if you do click through and enter your username and password, you’ll want to change your password. If you’ve received this type of spam from a friend, you may want to alert them to change their password.”

Such “phishing attacks” are increasingly common on both Twitter, where URL shortening – usually required to make standard URLs fit into the 140-character limit of the service – makes it harder to guard against dangerous links.

Account-shortening services such as bit.ly can block dangerous links, but only after they are alerted to them. The other option is to inspect the link before clicking on it – which the Twitter web page and Tweetdeck, a cross-platform program, do allow.

Spam and phishing attacks are a continual problem for Twitter, which is comparatively easy to join.

Graham Cluley of Sophos has posted a video showing how the hack is done to anyone incautious enough to click on the link. The site hosting the attack that Cluley points to is kevanshome.org, which is hosted in China; and the front page of the site is an exact copy of News Corporation’s MySpace even down to the copyright notice.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

A Twitter account, just like any marketing campaign, requires a set of goals that you hope to or think you should achieve through marketing in your arena. Are you looking to reduce customer service calls? Looking to build your brand awareness or thought leadership? If you want to learn from what youre doing, and find ways to become more successful on Twitter youll need to have a definite set of KPIs.

To start off with, you will want to track the basics. This information can be tracked using a variety of paid and free tools like Raven, Twitalyzer, Klout and a variety of others. They will provide with such KPIs as:

1. Post count the number of times youve tweeted in a given time frame

2. Replies the number of times another persons tweet has started with @username in a given time frame

3. Retweets The number of times youre tweets have been retweeted in a given time frame

4. Mentions the number of times your username was included in a tweet (but wasnt considered a reply)

5. Friends & Followers

But you should also look beyond these more generic KPIs and also consider the more specific KPIs such as the below:

3. Use a service like Twist to look for trends of product names and keywords

4. Overall sentiment in replies to your Twitter account

5. What day and time of day were your tweets most effective (with regards to replies, retweets and URL clicks)?

The question most people fail to ask when looking at their data is why? If you see an increase in follower count or replies, dont simply report on this number. Have a think as to why you believe the increase or decrease occurred. Once you start asking questions and forming thoughts on this, you will find there is a lot more to report on than just followers.

If you want to link to this blog, copy and paste the following HTML code to your website.

Source: www.seoconsult.co.uk

What does this mean for SEO? Every internet marketer who includes Twitter in their internet marketing arsenal should adapt their strategies to optimize their websites for this new brand of content. This new brand of content is fondly called SEO Twitter. Every search engine strategies that we use should also mean that your Twitter account and tweets should be search engine optimized.

Before we get our hands dirty with SEO Twitter, here are some tips that you should know:

Keyword Is Still The Key In our world, search engine optimization equals keyword research. Never ever forget that the language of your potential customers is still important. As much as possible, your tweets should start with keyword phrases the give a theme to each message. You can also use buzzwords as what Tweeps (people who use Twitter) call it. However, your tweets should not sacrifice keyword content and overall content just because of buzz words. A better way to do it is to carefully pick which words will better convey your message and will allow for real-time long term indexing in Google.

Branding It is best to optimize your Twitter account name by making sure that you Twitter account name reflect what your website, product, or service is. Of course your account name should promote who you are, your company, and what your product is. You might also want to check whether which combination or variation of your twitter account name shows the most frequency in search engine results every month.

Source: www.ltseo.com.au