Because they make information exchange easy, Web 2.0 applications help small business owners track customer and prospect preferences and quickly respond to concerns. In a world where customer service is an essential differentiator, Web 2.0 can improve the way your small business does business.

(Via Valleywag.)

SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of websites that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.

SMO as Guerrilla Marketing
The nature of Social Media Optimization is such that it could be considered a form of guerrilla marketing. Website owners and blog owners have the choice of either investing money or their own skills and time in order to generate traffic from social sites. As long as your efforts are directed appropriately, the more work you put in the more reward you will reap.

SMO as a Link Building Technique
Social optimization also has a happy side effect - it helps to build your link profile so you will usually gain search engine traffic in the long term. Becoming a part of an online community is essential to your social optimization and this, in turn, will naturally provide links to your website. The links will usually be from relevant pages based on a similar topic to that of your page. The more popular social sites are also given a lot of weight by certain search engines.

Optimize Your Existing Site
Create genuinely interesting, intriguing, or informative pages. Include images, links, video, and collaborative tools so that visitors really get involved when they do visit your site. SMO is basically digital word-of-mouth and, if your website doesn’t provide some kind of appealing experience to your visitors, then it simply won’t attract the positive word-of-mouth that you want.

Add new pages, if necessary, so that you can include more information. However, don’t just add pages for the sake of it - ensure that each page really does have something unique to offer. A website still needs to be well structured.

Get a Blog
Add a blog. Every website has potential blog posts in it so find yours and start blogging regularly. Blog posts tend to attract links from other blog posts and those in turn will spread the word of your website. The more popular your blog becomes, the more value it is perceived to provide and the more visitors you will continue to get.

Be active in those blogs that are within your industry and use your link where permitted and relevant. Don’t spam because that will lose you more friends than it will make but, if you provide relevant information and a forum or blog allows you to link to it, then provide an insightful comment and provide a link.

Be Active
Being active is a vital part to your whole SMO campaign. Simply registering with social bookmarking sites and content sharing sites is not enough. You need to be involved, post regularly, and generally become a part of the community. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to do this, then find somebody else to do it instead.

Some Social Sites To Join
You really do reap what you sow in terms of SMO. Determine the sites that are most suitable to your website, join them, and become an active member. Choose some broad topic sites as well as some that are specific to those interested in the industry in which you operate or topic that you cover. Look at social news submission sites, content sharing sites, bookmarking, and networking sites and try to get a broad coverage of all of them. Here are just a few of the sites you should seriously consider using:

Social News/Media Sharing Websites

• Reddit - Reddit is a very popular social news website that boasts a lot of subscribers and covers a wide range of topics.
• Digg - Initially, Digg was reserved to technology and related topics but is now a broad topic news site that again has a lot of subscribers and regular readers.
• Newsvine - Not as popular as the two above but offering a slightly more formal tone to its content. Again, a good range of topics are covered.

Social Networking Sites

• MySpace - It may be largely riddled with spam, but there are still too many genuine users for you to ignore MySpace. You don’t have to be an unsigned band to take advantage either.
• Facebook - Has caused quite a stir and offers users the chance to create and distribute their own applications as well as content. Another very popular site.
• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and businesses. It can really help to build a huge network of partners, customers, and other useful contacts in a business network.

Social Bookmarking Websites

• del.icio.us - Register, store bookmarks that you find useful, and include a bookmark to your website and use a public profile.
• Stumble Upon - Same again. Alternatively, you can add a Stumble icon to each of your pages, blog posts, and other media and let your readers do the walking for you.

Buttons For Your Pages
Many social websites provide a button that your readers or visitors can use to automatically add a page. Bookmarking and content sharing sites, in particular, have these buttons and, if you’ve ever read a website or an article site, then you will have seen the Digg This and Stumble buttons at the bottom of each entry. Users registered with these sites can click the button and quickly add your page. The most popular websites are usually displayed on the high traffic home pages delivering yet more visitors to your site.

Offering Quality
The Social Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for promoting your business, but it needs to be done properly and carefully. Simply tagging, bookmarking, and sharing every page you have regardless of its quality will not bring you the desired results. You may find that it does you more harm than good in the long run.

By Matt Jackson

(Via KDI Media : Savannah, GA.)

Twitter is as unstable as it is irresistible. It’s shaky two year history (give it a few weeks to bring home its second anniversary) has been marked by plenty of highs, but just as quickly, infuriating lows.

This time, though…this time it’s going to be different. It’s going to greet its users Monday morning, and as Apple’s global fan club descends on Moscone West in San Francisco, physically and/or virtually, Twitter’s going to take its users through it all. From the grand-opening to the Steve Jobs sermon to the wink-wink-you-know- what’s-coming launch party, Twitter’s got it covered. Probably. Maybe. No guarantees. They’re expecting a ten-fold increase over their normal daily traffic count, so wager as you please.

Given the company’s history, they of course know this micro-blogging thing of theirs isn’t fault-proof. 100% is certainly not in-house Twitter terminology. But if Biz Stone’s portrayal today of what’s to come from the Rails-based platform is anything accurate, Twitter may well make it through Monday’s madness as one whole fully-operable bunch of code. As Stone describes it:

‘We’ve moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers, and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency. This work is in intended to help handle the load and keep Twitter up and running while Steve Jobs talks about all the new products and services Apple has planned. Of course these improvements will continue to serve Twitter beyond the WWDC as well.’

Otherwise, communication breakdown, folks. Which won’t please anyone. Enter, Plan B:

‘In the event that our estimates and preparations fail, we have designed a way to keep Twitter updates moving quickly through the system to their respective recipients. We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features. Should it become necessary to shed incoming load quickly, we can turn off features such as stats, pagination, and several others to preserve the reliability and timeliness of your Twitter timeline.’

Stone also rips a line out of Jobs’s book of commandments, saying there’s ‘one more thing.’ It seems that they’ve put together something to convenience Apple fans eager to quickly learn about announcements 140 characters at a time. Stone reveals little else, though he advises readers to expect an update on the matter soon.

(Via Mashable!.)

(Via Valleywag.)

I recently snagged more work from one client by finding out that he had a lot of blogging work he needed done. These weren’t for any of his clients, but for his own sites. But, he just didn’t have time to do them and meet client deadlines as well (a lot of internet entrepreneurs have this problem, including yours truly).

How have our freelancing readers converted one-shot jobs into long-term clients? Let’s hear your advice, or situations to avoid, in the comments.

How to Get More Work from Existing Clients [FreelanceSwitch]

(Via Lifehacker.)

(Via digg.)

Their HSPA network will then be finalized, bringing 1.4 Mbps (Down) and 800 Kbps (Up) to all users in its range. AT&T’s next move will be offering HSPA in more markets. By the end of June, HSPA will be in 275 US markets. But by the end of the year, AT&T plans for that number to grow to 350. [AT&T via Phone Scoop]

(Via Gizmodo.)

CSS style sheets have made it easier to handle web pages during web development. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets as the name suggests is a style sheet that allows you to easily link to other documents in your website. It allows you to retain control over the various elements in different web pages of your website.

CSS only defines the structure and content presentation of a website it has nothing to do with the design of a website. A single CSS sheet can control the font, positioning, colour and style information of an entire website.

9 advantages of using CSS

1. Web pages are easier to load and uses less bandwidth

CSS style sheets are preferred by web developers for website development because they are lighter than table layouts, which consumes lots of bandwidth. The style sheet is downloaded only once and stored in the cache memory, so subsequent pages load faster.

2. A CSS style sheet compliments well with HTML

HTML is insufficient when used independently in website development, but when combined with CSS they can result in technically stronger web pages.

3. CSS allows you to position your element anywhere in the webpage

Web developers love to use CSS because it allows them to position their element where ever they want in the web page. If during any phase of web development the developer feels that particular links or columns are not going well with the situation then it becomes easier for them to position them easily using CSS. CSS reduces the risks associated with maintenance of the website.

4. CSS is compatible with all web browsers

CSS is combined with HTML or XHTML by web developers for web application development because it is compatible with all web browsers. The sites that use CSS appear similar in all the web browsers.

5. CSS can be used to create print friendly web pages

Most of the web developers love to use CSS for building their HTML based web applications because they allow them to create print friendly web pages. These web pages can be easily printed. The colours, images and other things which are difficult to be printed can be eliminated and printed easily.

6. CSS style sheets allows the user to customize the webpage

Now days many websites allow the user to change the layout of the website without affecting the content. The CSS style sheets which are stored externally allow the user to make requisite changes by themselves. Most of the modern browsers give user the liberty to define their own style sheets like changing some font properties etc.

7. CSS style sheets makes it easier for your website to feature in search engines

The CSS style sheets are favoured by web developers because they allow them to position their elements as per their wish anywhere in web application. Positioning helps to project the main contents first, so that it is easily captured by web spiders. CSS also gives cleaner HTML codes thus cutting down the job of web spider to search the real content from junk code.

8. CSS allows the web pages to have absolute consistency

One of the reasons for using CSS during web development is that they allow consistency to all web pages. All the expressions and texts will get their characteristics from external style sheet. Web developers need not to worry about the change in characteristics of the elements because they can be easily altered at any stage of web development by using CSS.

9. CSS lends portability to content

By using CSS you can make separate style sheets for different media. This provides you the great flexibility in presenting your content. CSS allows you to redefine the characteristics of elements in a website to suit the need of the situation. For e.g.: A separate style sheet will allow you to redefine the characteristics of certain elements so that they are easier to be printed. Also the user will never come to know that you had restructured the characteristics for their benefit.

CSS is created to make the things easier for your website and also to give you control over different elements in your website. Utilising benefits of CSS will give you popular user friendly web pages.

“

(Via Clippings.)

But Facebook built their social graph on college campuses, and college is where you learn the schoolyard is no place for sharing anymore. At least the company gave a clear reason in language that echoes its official terms of use — unlike eBay’s obviously anticompetitive moves to block first PayPal, and (after buying that company), Google Checkout, from leveraging its marketplace.

Is Facebook’s move motivated by competitive rivalry? Probably. Can Google complain publicly that it’s unfair? Nope. Looks like Facebook’s hire of Elliot Schrage is already paying off in terms of dishing Google the company’s own PR medicine. Ultimately, while Google’s embrace of open standards makes it attractive to developers, users only care about one thing: whether websites work as expected, and don’t surprise them by making their data pop up on other sites unawares.

(Via Valleywag.)