RSSApplied’s blog

Has anyone else noticed that you can create a personal profile with google?  From Google's own description they say:

A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you're all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you'd like.

Use multiple Google products? Soon your Google Profile will link up with these as well.

This may be old news but from the sounds of this statement "Use multiple Google products? Soon your Google Profile will link up with these as well." They're figuring out how to implement it into their other services. 

The regular old forms like:

• First and Last name

• City you live in

• occupation

are all there but in the true spirit of Google they throw in a few interesting questions like:

• super power

• something you still can't find using google

• places you've lived in the past

It will be interesting to watch how this progresses.  Could this be another way google is looking into starting a social network?  Could they be contemplating taking on LinkedIn?

There are quite a few different ways to utilize RSS in your marketing efforts.  RSS feeds can provide your customers with a notification whenever you make any changes.  These changes can be anything from price updates to blog posts to sending a new joke each day.  The possibilities are endless.  Before you jump into the fairly new world of RSS Marketing you have to create a plan.  We've created a short slide share presentation to get you started on that process.  If you would like more help head over to RSS Applied and contact us and we'd be glad to give you assistance.

Over at the Rss Applied blog we wrote up a review of a new URL shortening site called Cli.gs.  It has a few interesting features including the ability to track the following metrics:

• Total hits
• Mentions of the original url on twitter, blogs and the web
• Mentions of the clig on twitter, blogs and the web
• Delicious book marks to the original url
• Total number of links to the original url

If you want to read the entire post check it out at the link above.

CareerBuilder.com has done a study of more than 31,000 employers.  They found that 1 in 5 use social networking sites to screen applicants for new jobs.  This has gone from a mere 11% in 2006 and 9% of the surveyed people plan to use it in the future.

A surprising stat from the survey is that 1 out of 3 have found something on social networks to warrant disqualifying the candidate.   So you may be wondering what exactly are they looking for?

• 41% say information regarding drugs and alcohol use is their main concern
• 40% look for inappropriate photos
• 29% look for poor communication skills
• 28% are interested in seeing if the candidate badmouths a former employee
• 27% compare qualifications to application
• 22% make sure the screen name isn't unprofessional
• 21% are concerned with notes regarding criminal behavior
• 19% worry about the candidate posting confidential info from a previous employer

One good thing to come from the survey is that 24% had found information that led to the candidate being hired.

Here are our tips for how to keep your profile professional if you're looking for a job.

• If you don't want to compromise your account, set your account to private so only your friends can see it.  This may sound obvious but many people over look this
• look through all your pictures and take out all those college toga party pictures. 
  
• Set your profile so you have to manually approve all comments.  This will keep your profile clean not only from the ridiculous glitter images people seem to enjoy spreading but also from the comments from your buddies about how wasted you got at the above toga party
• Treat your profile page as an extension of your resume. If you are looking for a job realize that 1 in 5 companies are going to check it.  Make it professional looking and sounding even if it's only until you land your job
  

So there are some pretty good web 2.0 conferences coming up.  Anyone planning to hit any up? 

Startup

9/10 San Fran
Startup SF is back after a short summer vacation and raring to go with the THIRD meetup of the year. The Topic of v1.3 will be “Design for Startups” and the guest speaker is Scott Nazarian from frog

Web20

Web 2.0 Expo, co-produced by TechWeb and O'Reilly Media, is a conference and tradeshow for the rapidly growing ranks of designers and developers, product managers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketers, and business strategists who are embracing the opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies.

Blogworld

9/20 - 9/21 Las Vegas
The first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media. In addition to the only industry-wide exhibition, BlogWorld features the largest blogging conference in the world including more than 50 seminars, panel discussions and keynotes from iconic personalities on the leading-edge of online technology and internet-savvy business.


10-02 San Fran

Startonomics

Startonomics is a one-day workshop designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs on how to create simple, actionable metrics for internet startups, and use them to make better product and marketing decisions for long-term growth and success.

One of Rss Applieds biggest requests is to help curb a negative search engine result.  We thought we'd take the time to make up a short presentation on some simple things that can get you started to doing your own reputation repair.  Of course sometimes you need to bring in the help of a professional in whcih case we'll be here for you.

Yesterday at Rss Applied we talked about how google entered the browser war.  Today we brought a story that has been heading around the blogosphere.  A very interestingly worded section of the Google TOS. 

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.

If you're interested in see the response from google just head over the Rss Applied Blog and read the Has google turned evil post

We just wrote up an article at our blog on Rss Applied describing some of the different ways to utilize twitter for the businesses. 

Here are numbers 5, 6 and 7... for the rest check out the full post Rss Applied - Using Twitter for Business

5. Competition Watch

Don’t forget that you’re not the only tech savvy company out there. Chances are your competition is on twitter as well… Follow them and pay attention to what they’re saying.

6. Links to Your Site

Fill out your profile and include a link to your site. Twitter has a field for you to input your website but unfortunately they put the dreaded “nofollow” on it. However if you drop your link in a different part of your profile like the “bio” section you get a link without the “nofollow”.

EDIT: Please check out the Rss Applied site for an update to this story.

7. Feed Your Tweets into Your Blot

As part of your blog promotion feed your Twitter RSS feed into your blog. This not only provides more content but also keeps your blog readers aware of what you’re doing. Provide a link to your Twitter account and you can get some more followers out of it as well.

Here is a slideshare presentation we made to show in a semi light hearted manner the benefits of our blog optimization.

I just wrote up a review of the hellotxt tool.  Check it out over at my permanent blog: RssApplied Blog

Here is a snippet:

In our constant search for new tools and methods we have come across a tool that addresses this very issue. Hellotxt steps up and offers the ability to send out status updates to 23 different social platforms.  Some of them are a bit obscure but the main players like Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Bebo, Hi5, Plurk and FriendFeed are all there.

Feel free to leave comments over there or over here.