• Tribes
• Life After the 30-Second Spot
• Groundswell
• Socialnomics
• The Whuffie Factor

Have any of you read these books?  Which one should I start with?  What did you get for Christmas that is going to make you more social?

Disclosure: The links above are Amazon Affiliate links, but I do truly recommend these books and look forward to reading them.

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This month 12for12K is doing the 12 Days of Christmas Homeless push.  This month is less about the donations and more about getting out there and doing something for the homeless.  To do this, 12for12K came up something to do each day.

Here are the first 6 days.

1. Day 1. Contact your local homeless shelter(s) and ask what they need. Make a list and work from there.
2. Day 2. Gather 10 friends each (family, friends, colleagues) in preparation for Helping Day.
3. Day 3. Challenge these friends to a bake-off. Bake a bunch of homemade goodness – soup, stews, cookies, etc – ready for Helping Day.
4. Day 4. Clean out your closet (especially your husband’s, 12for12k wives!), and pack up all the old clothes that you find. Coats, socks, underwear, shoes, jeans – anything and everything.
5. Day 5. Go through your linen closet and think of what blankets, sleeping bags, duvets, etc, that you no longer need.
6. Day 6. Check your pantry – do you really need all these tins of soup or canned stew? Collect and store.

To see the rest of the days and learn more, go check out the rest of the 12for12K post.

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• Join the 12for12k Challenge

• Join the newly created UpYourSocial Facebook Fan Page
• Leave a comment telling me you joined

That’s it. I will send the invites out until they are gone.  I look forward to having more people to talk to on Google Wave.

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Just a few hours ago, I launched my first ever LostInTechnology Holiday Gift List.  After I finished making that list, I thought that I should make one for my readers at UpYourSocial, because my readers here need gift ideas as well.

The list I built for UpYourSocial only contains books, but that’s because books are always a great Christmas gift, especially when they teach you a lot about social media.  The books I’ve recommended are all fantastic and will surely please any social media addict you might know.  You can click on the widget below or go straight to the UpYourSocial Recommended Reading Store.

Disclosure: The store was made using the Amazon Affiliate Program.

Image by Mr Wabu

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To learn more about the counter, head over to Gary Hayes’ now.

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Not everyone may agree with his brand, but he does have one.  In my opinion, you must always keep an open mind in how you brand yourself.  This interview will shine a little light on that idea.  The following interview does have some adult language, but I wanted to keep it unedited in order to give you the full experience that is FitJerk.

1. Who are you and what do you do online?

What… you don’t know who I am? Insanity! Well I’m FJ and am passionately involved with fitness and health. As far as my topic is concerned there’s really only 3 things you need to know.

- I won’t take your shit. I don’t accept the guilt of those who chose to be mediocre in life because I don’t have time to waste on people who aren’t willing. Those who want to work with me are usually the ones that want success REAL bad. They WANT to be in shape and they are willing to put in the work. For those that like to fluff around and make excuses… there are plenty of trainers who will kiss your ass for the sake of a cheque. I ain’t one of em.

-  I’m results oriented. Useless theories, unproven techniques and ridiculous gadgets and gear are OUT. I only prescribe and recommend shit that’s proven to deliver results. I make sure I walk my talk and stay in shape year round… I feel credibility has value. I’m sure others agree.

- I have a bizarre sense of humor. I can get intense, in your face or joke about something random, whatever comes to my head first. You’re either offended and bitch about it or your cracking up. At least, those are the two types of responses I’ve gotten from my content. Doesn’t matter tho, I can’t change who I am and I don’t expect to please everyone.

As for online. Well I have my own self published ebook called Flawless Fitness and I run my blog over at FitJerk’s Fitness Blog. I’m pretty active there so those looking for an open-uncensored place to share/read about fitness info are welcome to come hang.

2. Can you tell us a little about your online marketing strategy?

No doubt, let’s start with the blog. The first concept is freedom. I NEVER censor anyone’s comment on my blog. You can quite literally, come to the blog and be like “F*** YOU FJ, I DISAGREE”. Whatever, I’m ok with that. I’m tired of this pussy shit where every little piece of info is ‘censored’. It’s hindering people form truly expressing themselves. I’m not saying dropping f-bombs is the way to express yourself but at times when you do… ain’t nothing wrong with that. Just remember that I WILL respond.

The second part is involvement. I reply to every comment & email I get. I mean, a dude came over, read your shit and felt compelled to take a few minutes to express his opinion and/or ask a question. Only a fucking retard would ignore this type of person, if only for the fact that he COULD be your potential customer if you think about it. Content is king, but your audience is what makes you huge… if you don’t get that, you’ll never be a business person. Go work a j.o.b.

As for the book. Well my strategy is simple, I link it up where I can and funnel the traffic I get from my blog to promote it. And I also have a few affiliates who promote it for me. Simple. The blog is like my home, and those that are interested know what to do if they want to find out about the book. Value sells itself. It’s not rocket science.

3. How does SEO and social media fit into that strategy?

As far as SEO is concerned I’ve realize there are these 4 laws that everyone is usually bound to:

1. Web Traffic Cannot Be Created Out Of Nothing Nor Destroyed… It Must Be Leveraged In One Form Or Another.
2. Traffic = Money
3. Traffic Is Attracted To Value, Therefore Content Is King & Links Are The Queen.
4. Understand The Search Engine, But Think Like A Free Man (Or woman)

The explanation or the “why” behind these laws can be read about on my blog, its a deep article. But I basically run my business based on these 4 laws. I came up with them after looking at the commonalities behind the big online businesses and after doing some of my OWN testing.

Another thing… social media IS the fucking strategy. You don’t say “oh let’s encorporate social media into our business and spend X amount of time on it”. That’s idiotic. Social Media IS where you should be spending MOST of your time to make connections/partnerships and customer relations since that’s where the BIGGEST CHUNK of people are at! I mean, would you rather goto a party thrown by the hottest DJ in town? Or to the one thrown by the owner of the local pub? It’s about being where the people are and then actually interacting with them.

4. What has been the most valuable piece or idea in your marketing strategy?

Making yourself viral-worthy. “If you’re pumping out good shit, people will follow”. If you know where that quote is from, bonus points for you. But honestly, that is SO vital. You can spend $10,000 and throw half a million page hits to your blog or website but if your content resembles the pile of crap left by a warpig then no one is going to stick around or talk about you.

You should be able to make money of a site that gets 1000 visits per month. That’s how sticky it should be. Now I’m not talking about a considerable income but if out of 1000 people, you’re not making SOME cash, then a red flag should go up.

5. What are a few common mistakes people make when marketing themselves online?

1. They aren’t brandable, therefore they aren’t memorable. Did you know that “fitjerk” is one of my top 10 keywords that brings in traffic? And how fucking targeted do you think that traffic is? Hmm. So think about it. Apple.com doesn’t get a shit load of visitors only from people who search for “laptop” or “mp3 player”. They get visitors from those that type in “ipod” “apple” “Macintosh” “Steve Jobs” or “iphone”. The MADE UP these keywords and now it’s performing for them. If this doesn’t prove the power of branding to you than you’re a complete moron.

2. They are boring as hell. They might be GREAT when it comes to their subject matter but when it comes right down to explaining it or putting it forward in an entertaining way, the fail hardcore. Millions of people don’t love the show Family Guy because it has redeeming knowledge for people to learn. They love it because it’s ENTERTAINING. So what happens if you can mix entertainment with true value? Fucking magic baby.

3. They suck. Plain and simple. These people might have the drive the worth ethic and even the passion behind their subject matter but they just plain SUCK. The internet is a double edged sword… you can reach a MASSIVE audience if you’re good, but on the flipside, if you suck, no one will even know you exist. BUT… this is a good position to be in because if you have the drive,  you have a good foundation, so the good news is that you can get better. Invest in yourself, read some shit, train yourself, take courses learn how to be more valuable then try again. As long as you don’t quit and keep hammering away, you’ll eventually make it.

Well that’s all I got for you now. Peace out.

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Every blog was tasked with trying to write about climate change in the context of their blog.  At first, I thought that writing about how social media is helping prevent climate change was going to take a decent amount of research to find some good information.  I was wrong, and I’ll never underestimate how widespread social media is and how much impact it can have.

First, I did a quick Google search for “climate change social media.”  This yielded immediate results.  I found a social media toolkit from WWF on climate change.  I found that there are green social networking sites.

Now, I did a Google search for “top green social networks.”  I found two top ten lists that I would like to share.

• Top 10 Green Social Networks
• 10 Green Social Networks You Should Know

These are great places to start in finding ways to fight climate change through social networks.  Do you have a favorite network or blog that talks about climate change?  If you do, share it with us in the comments.

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All you have to do is put in your first and last name.  Personas will start scanning all around the Internet for information that applies to you (or all the people that also have your name).  If you have a fairly unique name, some familiar bio’s or information will start popping up.

Projects like this always fascinate me.  What do you think of this project?  Do you know of anything similar?

No related posts.

I sent him over five simple questions that will shed a little more light on his strategy and may give you some ideas on how to launch your own blog.  I know it did for me.

1. Can you provide us with a little background about how you got starting in blogging, marketing and social media?

First website I started was about my favorite music band. I loved the band, listened to it daily, and spent a lot of time and money buying their music, reading about them, going to their concerts and interacting with other fans.

This was a topic I loved, knew much about and had passion for. And one way or another I tried the new Internet thingy and started a website about the band. This was in late 1990’s.

That turned me onto marketing and I went to study marketing first in high-school and then marketing management at university in 2002 or so.  I specialized in e-marketing at university, which turned me onto blogs  and social media. Then I transfered my music site onto WordPress in  2006 and that gave me insight into how blogs are run and that is how I  got the passion to make a “how to blog” blog some 2 years after.

2. You recently launched HowToMakeMyBlog and have quickly seen traffic and monetization results.  How did you use social media to successfully launch your blog?

At the start it was Stumbleupon only. I spent a lot time there, submitting sites I liked, looking for other bloggers etc. StumbleUpon sent me a very large share of my traffic in the early days. It is the easiest place to start getting traffic for a new blog. I have written a post about the way I use StumbleUpon, 10 Simple Steps To Increase Blog Traffic Via StumbleUpon.

3. How does social media work in your day to day growth strategy for your blog?

Now it is mostly Twitter. I send tweets about each of my new articles and if my article provides value to people they will share it, tweet it, stumble it etc. I have made it easy to do by including Tweet This and Stumble This button in all my articles. Investing time in your Twitter account is very much recommended as it has huge potential for viral marketing.

4. If you could change one thing about your launch, what would it be?

I didn’t realize the potential of Twitter for marketing a blog until about month and a half into my blog. When I joined Twitter that is when it really started. So I would wish I knew about Twitter before as if I started a blog today Twitter would be my most important platform to spread the word about a launch of a new blog.

5. We’ve mostly discussed social media as a business tool, what are your favorite social sites that you use for fun and why?

As I work full time and as I try to keep a very consistent schedule on new posts regularly, I try to take my fun time offline and relax away from the screen. So I do not have any social media sites I just use for fun.

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A small donation can make a huge impact, and you can read the latest 12for12k blog post to see how far your money would really go.

There are other ways to get involved besides donations.  Just spread the word through any social site you use, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or your own blog.  Also, make sure to check out the site every month for updates on what the charity of the month is and to look at how our progress is coming along.  You can also follow the charity on Twitter.

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