Archive for November, 2009

Facebook users with more than two friends may want to choose which friend can access which information. Using the game “Armies” as an example let us review how simple it is to create a separate user group and choose how members of that group can interact with you on Facebook. I have chosen Armies because my wall was recently violated by an endless stream of posts from a member of that group. Instead of blocking her, which would have removed her as a valued member of my army, I chose to block all members of my group ARMIES from almost all of their ability to interact with me.

Since there are “real friends” on ARMIES I also created a subgroup called “ARMFRIENDS” to which I can add them so they can interact with me on my wall and other aspects of Facebook.

First you need to create a group. If you have never done so it is very simple.

1. Log in to your Facebook account
2. Click on the “Friends” link in the blue link bar at the top of the page
3. Click on the “Create New List” button
4. Enter the name of your new list in the text field in the pop-up
5. Add members to the list
6. Click the “Finish” button

Now that you have a list created and have added members from your contacts to your new list you can set the privacy setting for that group. In fact you can pretty much keep everyone from that group from doing almost anything with you. The following steps will allow you to block members of your new group from interacting with you as members of that group. Keep in mind if a member of this group is also a member of another group they may be able to interact with you as members of that other group according to the privacy settings for that other group.

1. Log in to your account
2. Mouseover the “Settings” link in the blue link bar at the top of your screen
3. Click on the “Privacy Settings” link
4. Click on the “Profile” link
5. Start selecting the drop downs and click on “Customize”
6. Features that allow you to block entire lists will a text field labeled “Except these people”
7. Type in names of individuals or entire lists
8. Repeat for every attribute you wish to block
9. Click the “Save Settings” button
10. You just modified your privacy to block an entire list!

Remember, if there are people who are on that list you wish to be able to interact with you then you MUST add them to another list which allows them to interact with you in the ways you wish. Also if someone you want to block is on two or more lists they may still be able to interact with you through one of the other lists they are on.

Be sure to list to Social Media Edge Radio every Tuesday at Noon Eastern. This week’s special guest is @ChrisBrogan

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Search engine optimization is on the tongue and keyboard of almost everyone doing business online. Since SEO depends on many different aspects learning everything about it can take weeks of intense study. However one of the most important tasks for the SEO manager is key word saturation and ratio. There is about an hour’s worth of teaching on that subject alone but I’ve found most people would rather do than understand. Which means – straight to the tools!

For any website there is a great analysis tool which gives a graphic view of use of words called a “word cloud generator”. Cut and paste any text (from a website, ad copy, article) into the parsing textarea and click the GO button. Here is a text cloud from one of my websites. See if you can determine the topic:

Even as a thumbnail the topic of that page is very evident and that is, in part, how it is viewed by the search engine. The bigger the word the higher the saturation. You also notice there are many words on the page so while the saturation is high the ratio is also controlled. You probably guess my key words are fha, georgia, home, mortgage, loans, streamline, and loan. See what Google does with it.

Of course there are other tools besides Wordle which offer similar results but Wordle seems to be the fastest and simplest to use for multiple purposes including speeches and articles. Tagcrowd provides a similar service with less visual appeal.

For Twitter users there is the tweetcloud generator. Here are the results for my Georgia FHA Twitter account. SEO pundits love to pontificate about the power of Twitter as an SERP helper. I’m still watching it but the real value from me has been the result of the direct interaction with others on Twitter. I even host a trivia game from time to time on Friday nights just to get to know others.

What tools have you used to analyze the word content and how has it helped your SEO?

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