A tweet from harry_0:

2 days ago I started taking stats 4 http://harrysworld.com.au/ & in that 48hrs Iv had 4,000 hits. Im so grateful & its just the beginning.  Fri 5 Mar. 09:29

In recent days I have noticed Harry O’Brien, AFL Collingwood player has taken on social media in big way. You can catch him at his Blog Harry’s World.  He is doing a great job and all Collingwood Fans must love it.

He has not listed a Facebook page on his Twitter Profile. @Harry_O seems to be handling the Social media scene okay…If you know it is the real deal then everyone should realize any others are fake.

@Jobe Watson and @AngusMonfries are on Twitter as well.

@ JobeWatson:  Just got our new suits from Soho. Glad the pirate will have something to wear to the Season Launch at Etihad on March 16. http://is.gd/9yzJk Wed 3 Mar 9:13

@JobeWatson: getting ready to head to visy for practice match against melbourne, looking forward to a good hitout. Sat 27 Feb 9:52

@AngusMonfries: Thanks for questions. I’m studying journalism at Latrobe Uni, been doing it for a few years part time, trying to fit it in around training!! Thur 4 Mar 20.52

Let’s not scare then off, an official presence makes all other dummy pages just that, fakes….and as for facebook there is always Unfriend.`

In the article below McLean said she was not deterring players from using Facebook, but was urging them to play it smarter.

Great Advice: PLAY IT SMARTER.

Article : Herald Sun: AFL clubs spy on football stars by Mark Stevens

AFL clubs are turning to a renowned “cyber cop” amid mounting concerns about the pitfalls of mobile phones and Facebook pages.

Susan McLean, a former policewoman with 27 years’ experience, has been called into the inner sanctum at Carlton and Fremantle in recent weeks.

McLean, who also visited the Brisbane Lions last year, has delivered warts-and-all briefings on the dangers of the web and “sexting” on phones.

It is understood the clubs paid McLean, Australia’s leading expert on the issue, about $1500 a session.

McLean said yesterday she confronted players with examples close to home, researching heavily to expose dangerous Facebook pages.

“When I go into clubs I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to dig the dirt on the players,” McLean said.

“I say to them, ‘These are the pictures I can find’. I’ve got some interesting stuff on all the clubs that I’ve been in.

“Clubs have now got a handle on this, identifying it as a welfare issue and the players are jumping on it.

“Clubs, certainly the ones I’ve spoken to, are now developing it as part of their code of conduct to give them guidance.”

Several players have also been the victim of fake Facebook sites, using their name to lure friends.

Even Carlton coach Brett Ratten is the target of a dummy page as the problem spreads, with McLean offering advice on how to kill off fakes.

McLean has also focused on mobile phones, warning that young players keeping naked photos of girlfriends under 18 were breaking the law.

With Brendan Fevola copping heat for allegedly forwarding a naked photo of Lara Bingle via his mobile phone, McLean’s services are likely to be in high demand.

“I missed Fevola at Brisbane because he wasn’t there last year and I missed him at Carlton because he was at Brisbane,” McLean said.

At least two other clubs are considering calling in McLean, who said players were in need of an outlet to discuss cyber and phone issues.

McLean was the first Victoria Police officer appointed to a position involving cyber safety and young people and now has a key role in schools and universities to eradicate bullying.

She yesterday outlined several damaging examples on the web, including:

A HIGH-PROFILE player whose first friend on Facebook was pictured naked.

McLean told the players at the club: “If she had any clothes on, I couldn’t find them. This is one of your teammates’ No. 1 friends … but what is this showing?”

A YOUNG star at the centre of a fake Facebook page, which attracted hundreds of female friends thinking they were interacting with the player himself.

“While the player has nothing to do with it, he was concerned he was hurting people,” McLean said.

A PLAYER had 1600 “close personal friends” listed. “That’s not manageable in any way, shape or form. It’s just sheer stupidity,” McLean said.

McLean, who provides a 90-minute presentation as well as a one-on-one follow-up, made it clear the message on Facebook was getting through.

“About 50 per cent of each club’s players have a presence on Facebook. After I’ve been, it would probably drop down to 10 per cent,” McLean said.

“I know because I go back and look. They’ve all gone. They’ve heeded the message.”

McLean said she was not deterring players from using Facebook, but was urging them to play it smarter.

Trying to find an article that takes my interest can at times be time consuming  especially at the end of busy day. Smartbloggerz Why Should You Blog Regularly? by Typhoon definitely put me back on the right track when it comes to blogging.  I love social media, I love searching blogs, and twitter links and picking something that interests me.  It is like reading a book before going to bed. To all of you bloggers, keep blogging…..regularly!

If you’re going to be a successful blogger, one important point to keep in mind is that you should update your blog regularly. By regular, I simply mean that you should define a schedule and STICK to that schedule. Do NOT wander off that schedule, ever.

But, that’s difficult, right? Why?

The major reason why people tend to lose interest midway through their blogging is because they start out wrongly. They decided to blog about something that was not really their point of interest. So, primary rule to success is – Blog about what you love!

Here I share 4 reasons why you should blog regularly:

A Regular Schedule Turns Readers Into ‘Loyal Readers‘

The idea is pretty simple. When you plan and stick to a schedule, your readers get used to that schedule. Eventually, they don’t have to rely on the blog feeds either. As long as they are well aware of your posting schedule, they’ll generally visit your blog themselves on days when they expect you to update the blog. Finding fresh content gives them a reason to keep coming back!

You Lose Traffic When You Deviate

Consider the point above. When loyal readers re-visit your blog, they do so with the expectation of reading something new. If you regularly SKIP your scheduled posting times and neglect the entire blogging area, then these visitors will gradually get disappointed. They won’t be able to keep track of your blog updates and quite a few might simply stop visiting you. This generally leads to a decline in traffic (and a sharp decline, mind that) which is the last thing you want if you’re aiming to be a successful blogger.

Regular Updates = Higher Search Engine Positions

Obviously, Search engines want content. They love content. Everytime they visit your blog, they’ll scrape it for new content. If they find it, they index it. And when they index it, you have more pages indexed in a particular search engine. That, in turn, means you have more chances of people visiting your blog when they’re searching for something, as with the addition of each new blog post, you basically widen the scope of topics you cover. And the more pages and quality posts you have indexed, you get more authority in the search engines. Anyone who has a basic idea of success, would not disagree with this post!

Regular Updates Get You More Backlinks

Don’t forget that quite a few of your readers are also bloggers(in most of the niches). And when you regularly update your blog, every once in a while they’ll like something you posted and link back to you from their own blogs. What does this offer you? Free backlinks! Who would not want free backlinks? All it takes is some time to stay true to your schedule and you get so many benefits without having to actually work hard for them.

Conclusion

There’s countless advantages of regularly updating your blog. More traffic (which leads to more revenue), more exposure, you establish yourself as a professional in your blogging niche, etc. Of course, it all requires you to stick to your schedule. And if you’re short on time, then plan a schedule that does not require too much time, but can still effectively keep your blog fresh!

Are you able to stick to your schedule? If not, what makes that thing does not happen? Let me know by commenting below or comment on Smartbloggerz site.

thanks to Smartbloggerz Why Should You Blog Regularly? by Typhoon…. Great motivation!

Great article on openforum.com: 4 Myths about social Media Business by Leah Betancout. I loved Myth #2: Set It and Forget It.

With great anticipation, businesses set up a blog, twitter and facebook  and think that it will just all happen for them.  It won’t without regular posting, cross promotion between social media sites and monitoring.  No-one will want to venture to your blog if it never changes. It all takes maintenance, not just end of the day quick post stuff, but thought and time about what your business wants to say and promote. [...]

Love this list of definitions of words of the Year 2009  published in telegraph.co.uk: ‘Tweetups’ and ‘unfriend’ among Oxford English Dictionary’s ‘words of the year’ by Richard Savill.

Words of the Year 2009

Bossnapping – noun: (in France) the prevention of senior managers from leaving company premises for a period of time by their employees, in order to protest about large-scale redundancies and cutbacks

Zombie bank – noun: a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support

Geoengineering/ecohacking – noun: the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth’s climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming.

Jeggings – plural noun: close-fitting leggings made of fabric that resembles denim in appearance [from jeans + leggings]

Minute mentoring – noun: a system of advising aspiring professionals based on the format of speed-dating.

Phantonym – noun: a word that looks as it if means one thing but in fact means something quite different. [from ‘phantom + antonym]

(for example fulsome, used by President Obama to mean ‘full’, when in fact it is now chiefly used in reference to excessive flattery).

Tweetup – noun: a meeting or other gathering organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter. [from tweet + up on the pattern of MEETUP]

Staycation – noun: a holiday spent in one’s home country rather than abroad, or one spent at home and involving day trips to local attractions

Simples – exclamation: used to say that something is very easy to achieve [from the 'compare the meerkat' TV advert]

Great Recession – noun: term for the current recession, modelled on the Great Depression.

Hashtag – noun: a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets.

Freemium – noun: a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content

Paywall – noun: a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers

Unfriend/defriend – verb: to remove from one’s ‘friends’ list (e.g. on a social networking website)

Tag cloud – noun: a visual depiction of the word content of a website, or of user-generated tags attached to online content, typically using colour and font size to represent the prominence or frequency of the words or tags depicted.

Slashdot effect – noun: the slowing down or crashing of a small website due to a huge increase in traffic when the website is linked to another, much more popular one.

Newly topical

Snollygoster – noun: a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician

Redact – verb: censor or obscure (part of a text) for legal or security purposes.

Epigenome – noun: the pattern of chemical switches in all 2000 types of human cell that indexes genetic information

“Unfriend” and “Tweetups” are among the words that encapsulated the preoccupations and lifestyles of the past year, according to a study published on Wednesday 30th December, 2009

The inclusion of technological words was seen as a reflection of the influence that social networking sites have had on English vocabulary.

The list was chosen by Susie Dent, the dictionary expert on Channel 4’s game show Countdown, who scanned the Oxford English Corpus, a two billion word database.

“Unfriend”, meaning to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a site such as Facebook, was voted the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year in America, and is included along with its alternative defriend.

“Tweetups”, which are meetings or other gatherings organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter, are said to have grown in popularity.

Other words in the list, which was commissioned by Oxford University Press, come from the economy, fashion, and politics.

They include the “great recession”, and “Zombie Bank”, a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support.

“Bossnapping”, a phenomenon in France where employees prevent senior managers from leaving company premises to protest against large-scale redundancies is also on the list.

In the corporate world, there has been the emergence of “minute mentoring” among aspiring professionals, and “freemiums” and “paywalls” in businesses.

As the recession deepened this year, so the trend for “staycations”, holidaying at home rather than abroad, or staying at home and going out for day trips, grew.

The past craze for leggings has been replaced by this year’s trend for “jeggings”, close-fitting leggings made of fabric that resembles denim in appearance.

Also back in fashion are some old words which have been given a new lease of life due to recent events. Redact, which means to censor or obscure part of a text for legal or security purposes, has gained prominence due to the parliamentary expenses scandal.

The word “snollygoster”, meaning a shrewd, unprincipled person, has been applied to politicians.

thanks telegraph.co.uk

If you’re handing out labels, 2009 was arguably the year of social media (in the Internet world, at least). Everyone and anyone seem to be climbing on the bandwagon at the speed of light. If you don’t believe, check out this nifty social media counter to see exactly what’s going on in the space in real time. Gary Hayes as come up with a Social Media Count that will make you think about your business and its Social Media involvement.

This was the year it became clear to all savvy marketers that if you want to have any sort of online presence, then you need to be across as many forms of social media as possible. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, blogging – all these platforms and more will help you engage consumers and therefore boost your brand.

Now we’re into 2010 – and it’s crunch time. Your aim for this year should be to raise the bar and not only do social media, but to do it well. A half-hearted effort such as a Twitter account that is only updated once a month will not only do you no favours, but it could actually damage your brand.

Check out  InsideRETAILING:  The best of social media in 2009 by Paul Marshall for his best of social media campaigns that stood out for the year, some for the right reasons and some for the wrong reasons.

Great article in the New York Times by Eric Wilson Bloggers Crash Fashion’s Front Row about bloggers now gaining the same importance as famous fashion editors.  Definitely a complete change from previous years.

NOT everyone thought it was adorable in September when a 13-year-old wunderkind blogger named Tavi was given a front-row seat at the fashion shows of Marc Jacobs, Rodarte and others.

Oh now, don’t misunderstand. She was totally adorable. You could have gobbled her up, with her goofy spark plug style — a Peggy Guggenheim for the Tweeting tween set. Her feet, in designer stockings, did not quite touch the ground. Within a matter of months, Tavi Gevinson, the author of a blog called Style Rookie, was feted by designers, filming promotions for Target, flown to Tokyo for a party with the label Comme des Garçons and writing a review of the collections for no less than Harper’s Bazaar. Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the designers of Rodarte, described her in the pages of Teen Vogue as “curious and discerning.”

Rather, it was what the arrival of Ms. Gevinson, as a blogger, represented that ruffled feathers among the fashion elite. Anne Slowey, who has spent decades climbing the editorial ladder to a senior position at Elle, dismissed the teenager’s column as “a bit gimmicky” in an interview with New York magazine. And in an instant, the subtext in her complaint was read by dozens of Ms. Gevinson’s fans as an example of the tension between old media and new, when one leapfrogs ahead of the other.

As a relatively new phenomenon in the crowded arena of journalists whose specialty it is to report the news of the catwalks, fashion bloggers have ascended from the nosebleed seats to the front row with such alacrity that a long-held social code among editors, one that prizes position and experience above outward displays of ambition or enjoyment, has practically been obliterated. After all, what is one to think — besides publicity stunt — when Bryan Boy, a pseudonymous, style-obsessed blogger from the Philippines, is seated at the D & G show in Milan between the august front-row fixtures of Vogue and Vanity Fair, a mere two positions to the right of Anna Wintour?

“There has been a complete change this year,” said Kelly Cutrone, who has been organizing fashion shows since 1987. “Do I think, as a publicist, that I now have to have my eye on some kid who’s writing a blog in Oklahoma as much as I do on an editor from Vogue? Absolutely. Because once they write something on the Internet, it’s never coming down. And it’s the first thing a designer is going to see.”

Perhaps it was to be expected that the communications revolution would affect the makeup of the fashion news media in much the same way it has changed the broader news media landscape. At a time when magazines like Vogue, W, Glamour and Bazaar have pared their staffs and undergone deep cutbacks because of the impact of the recession on their advertising sales, blogs have made remarkable strides in gaining both readership and higher profiles. At the shows this year, there were more seats reserved for editors from Fashionista, Fashionologie, Fashiontoast, Fashionair and others, and fewer for reporters from regional newspapers that can no longer afford the expense of covering the runways independently.

But it is somewhat surprising that designers are adjusting to the new breed of online reporter more readily than magazines, which have been slow to adapt to the demand for instant content about all things fashion. Blogs are posting images and reviews of collections before the last model exits the runway, while magazine editors are still jockeying to feature those clothes in issues that will be published months later.

So it is not without reason that some editors feel threatened, or that seasoned critics worry that they could be replaced by a teenager. The designers and publicists who once quivered before the mighty pens are now courting writers from Web sites that offer a direct pipeline to potential customers. Sure, magazines and newspapers have started their own blogs and tweets, but reading them, you often sense a generational disconnect, something like the queasy feeling of getting a “friend” request from your mother on Facebook. (From Glamour.com: “Dating Tips: Why It’s Important to Get That Number.”)

Sites that include readers in the conversation are thriving, in a sense democratizing the coverage of style, much as designers and retailers — with lower priced fast-fashion collections — have democratized fashion itself. Garance Doré and Scott Schuman, two photographers who have become stars online (and who are a couple off-line), have created popular blogs with the simple idea of posting images of stylish people and opening them to public comment. Now designers are seeking their advice on communications strategies and even design — Ms. Doré and Mr. Schuman have worked on projects with Gap.

Other sites have gained credibility along with traffic. Fashionista.com had 103,512 unique visitors in November, and Fashionologie.com had 27,125, according to the online tracking agency Compete. Jezebel.com (a saucy blog that includes coverage of fashion) shot ahead of Style.com (the Condé Nast fashion site) for the first time this fall with more than a half-million visitors. These are considered large audiences for dispatches on such trivial developments as models refusing to wear Alexander McQueen’s crazy shoes or that such-and-such designer is looking for an intern.

The personalities behind those sites, in turn, are becoming as famous as some magazine editors. Marc Jacobs named one of his bag designs after Bryan Boy, while Sephora asked Lauren Luke, whose makeup videos are an Internet sensation, to preside over beauty contests in its stores. Designers are thinking differently in response to consumers who want instant gratification. Doo-Ri Chung, for example, describing her new basics collection in The Financial Times this fall, said her customer has a “blog mentality, not a magazine mentality.”

“The old idea of reading a magazine and planning ahead, that’s not something that younger customers do,” she said. “It’s a different world, and designers have to adapt.”

Still, the popularity and novelty of such sites have raised concerns that their writers might be unduly influenced by designers or beauty companies. New guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, announced in October, require blogs to disclose in their online product reviews if they receive free merchandise or payment for the items they write about. This bothered some bloggers, and reasonably so, since magazine editors commonly receive stockpiles of the same expensive goodies to review in their pages, and that practice is rarely disclosed even though magazines are beholden to advertisers for their livelihood.

Those guidelines also seem excessive at a time when magazines and newspapers are changing their tone to embrace the online culture. On several fashion sites last week, it was reported that Vogue is planning to feature a group of bloggers in its March issue, including Tommy Ton of Jak & Jil, Ms. Doré and, yes, even Bryan Boy.

Erik Qualman author of Socialnomics says a big question out there these days is:

What is the ROI (return of investment) of Social Media?

Or the ever popular how do I measure the ROI of social media?

Often when I get this question it’s appropriate for me to retort: “What’s the ROI of your phone?”

Other times it’s not appropriate to respond with this answer, which, if done in the wrong tone, or place, can win you a free punch in the face.

Then there are the naysayers that adamantly proclaim, “We aren’t doing social media because there isn’t any ROI.”

Check out the rest of this article at Socialnomics – Social Media Blog ; Social Media ROI Examples & Video for a great read.

The YouTube video Social Media ROI: Socialnomics is by Socialnomics author Erik Qualman. This video showcases several Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies. Music is by Bob Sinclair (“Tennessee”)

thanks to @ScottKilmartin for his tweet: “i love that ‘word of mouth’ has become ‘World of Mouth’ http://bit.ly/3rBqv6″ which led me to this article.

Code Name Max (CNM) Mashup:  our global hub of chic geeks share with  us the best of the week. [...]