One of the ways of having happiness in your online life is to know how to deal with people copying your work and using it without your permission. If you post a lot of things online, one day people will start noticing and start using your own without your permission.

Such events of other people copying and using your online work, without your permission, can make you upset or even affect your daily life. This is specially true if you do a lot of online things, like blogging, posting to Flickr, and so on.

There is an easy way to take care of such things, so that you can continue being more optimal. Simply file a DMCA notice with the company that hosts your work without your permission. This will allow you to try and protect your copyright.

You send a DMCA Notice, often called a Copyright Notice or Copyright Violations Notice, to the hosts of the websites where your work is being used or shown without your permission.

This will also allow you to simply keep doing what you want to do, without having to pause your focus or passion of writing online.

Let’s go through DMCA a little bit to help you get your DMCA skills up to date. Some real DMCA letters are also included below, that you are allowed to use for your own DMCA pursuits.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

What is a DMCA Notice?

A DMCA notice, or a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice, is basically a way of telling someone that your rights, under the DMCA, are being violated because someone used or shared your copyrighted work without your permission.

You can learn more about the DMCA and its controversial nature via the Wikipedia entry on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Even though DMCA is considered a very weak and ineffective law that many big companies actually use to stop people from talking about those companies, DMCA is your only real big legal bet against people who share your online work without your permission.

Since DMCA is a law, you can cite it legally to claim protection for your work.

Today we are going to focus on how you can send DMCA notices to let website owners or the hosts hosting those websites know that your content has been shared or used without your permission.

Your intended goal for such notices is to have the website owners remove your content, or to have the hosts force such website owners to remove the content.

While it is very tempting to send something like the following:

Your sites at

http://gogetthemsugarbabes.info/?p=1656

http://sugar-daddy-relationship.info/?p=1636

copied my content, without my permission, from http://eyeography.com/2009/01/15/the-chair-relationship-part-1-the-waiting-room/.

Per the DMCA law, I’m notifying you of this copyright infringement and asking that you remove all such content.

Waiting for your reply. Sincerely,

Bes Zain

You should realize that hosts are very sensitive about DMCA notices, whether it is to ignore them or to act on them. The above letter, while accurately depicting what is happening and what you want, will not be as effective as sending a DMCA letter that actually follows some of the legal rules that the DMCA states should be kept in mind.

The more legal your correspondence is when telling someone to obey the law, the better it is. DMCA is a law, and not a personal preference. Therefore, whenever you’re using it to your own advantage, you should stick with the legal definitions and terms so that that the corresponding host knows that you’re to be taken seriously. When you want to protect your copyright, you have to make sure each step you take is fully legal and effective.

Yes, sending a longer email with more confusing words is against what I always recommend in life about simplicity. However, when you’re dealing with legal stuff, you are allowed to forget simplicity a little bit if going the longer route is more effective. You can make the longer route extremely simple, however, by using any of my real DMCA letters, which I sent to hosts, as your own DMCA template.

Let’s go through 3 different copyright violation situations I had to pursue in the last 3 months with 3 separate hosts. This will show you how you can do the same if you find out any website online using your work without your permission.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

Godaddy and DMCA

Sending a DMCA notice to Godaddy is pretty easy. The Godaddy Trademark Terms page which outlines everything.

Skip reading that page, unless you like reading such stuff. Instead, send your DMCA notice to CopyrightClaims@godaddy.com or TrademarkClaims@godaddy.com, or both.

Godaddy response time on DMCA Copyright Notice emails is also very fast. I got an actual human response from them within 24 hours.

Story: I recently had someone scrapping off my photos and content from my Eyeography website.

Godaddy was fast in reacting to my emails and disabling the websites of such webmasters. While it’s scary to wonder whether Godaddy actually looked at my complaint first, checked the links and then disabled the copycat website OR if Godaddy simply disabled the website automatically, it was still good for me in this case because the sites, which were copying my content, were down within 48 hours of my first DMCA notice.

I sent the following email to Godaddy. You will notice all the legal language in the letter. Feel free to use this email or letter template yourself by changing my information below to your info.

To whom it may concern:

As required under Sections 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §§ 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3)), I hereby give notification of possible copyright infringement.

1. The original copyrighted material is listed at the URL(s) below:

http://eyeography.com/2009/01/15/the-chair-relationship-part-1-the-waiting-room/

2. The following URL(s) are infringing upon this copyright:

http://gogetthemsugarbabes.info/?p=1656

http://sugar-daddy-relationship.info/?p=1636

Additional Information:

I [Zain] created, wrote and published the article myself on my site Eyeography on January 15th, 2009. The infringing 3rd party scrapped, copied it and used my copyrighted work and image without permission on their site on November 11th, 2011.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Please expeditiously remove or disable all access to the infringing material listed above. Should you require any further information regarding this matter, please contact me at the address, telephone number or email address indicated below:

Digitally Signed,
Bes Zain

Bes Zain
PHYSICAL ADDRESS GOES HERE

PHONE NUMBER GOES HERE
EMAIL ADDRESS GOES HERE

You can see there is a lot of words being used which are not necessary. Long legal labyrinth, though it works.

In the end, you have to use legal forms of such DMCA in order to get results, or to take further action. The above template should help you copy paste anything you want anytime someone copies and uses your work without your permission.

I sent 3 separate DMCA notices to Godaddy in a month regarding over 20 different websites.

In the end, Godaddy shut down each and every one of the websites I had told them about in each email.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

HostMonster and DMCA

HostMonster also seems to be fast in taking care of DMCA notices. Again, I’m not sure if HostMonster actually verifies that there has been a DMCA violation or not. They do take action fast, which is good.

The very long HostMonster Terms of Service has the Copyright violations section explained in there. Again, no need to read it unless you want to be extra sure.

Send your DMCA notice to legal@hostmonster.com and you’ll receive a reply within 48 hours.

Here is the actual DMCA notice I sent to HostMonster, minus my contact info. Again, feel free to change my information below to yours.

You’ll notice that it is almost a copy paste of my Godaddy DMCA notice. That’s right: be efficient in your DMCA emails also. Have one template ready, fill in the info, and send that email, all within 2 minutes.

Such templates are what enable you to apply simplification to the DMCA process.

To whom it may concern:

As required under Sections 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §§ 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3)), I hereby give notification of possible copyright infringement.

1. The original copyrighted material is listed at the URL(s) below:

http://thereasoner.com/articles/5-signs-of-narrow-minded-selfish-friends-that-can-hurt-you

2. The following URL(s) are infringing upon this copyright:

http://www.repostpost.com/2012/01/14/warning-signs-of-selfish-people/

Additional Information:

I [Zain] created, wrote and published the article myself on my site The Reasoner on August 14th, 2007. The infringing 3rd party scrapped, copied it and used my copyrighted work without permission on their site on January 14th, 2012.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Please expeditiously remove or disable all access to the infringing material listed above. Should you require any further information regarding this matter, please contact me at the address, telephone number or email address indicated below:

Digitally Signed,
Bes Zain

Bes Zain
YOUR PHYSICAL ADDRESS

YOUR PHONE NUMBER
YOUR EMAIL

As simple as that. 5 days later, the plagiarized content was removed.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

Limestone Networks and DMCA

Limestone Networks has ignored my DMCA notices completely.

Limestone Networks Terms of Service lists their DMCA policies. You should read this, since it actually lists the process Limestone Network says it goes through when going after their customers who plagiarize content.

Even though the entire terms of service are there to outline the DMCA policies, Limestone Networks has so far, in my experience, not taken any action on any such DMCA notices.

The Limestone Networks Abuse Report Form allows you to submit an online abuse form report. You can also send an email to abuse@limestonenetworks.com with your report.

Limestone Networks hasn’t taken action on my submitted DMCA Abuse Report or my DMCA email.

Following is the email I sent to Limestone Networks:

To whom it may concern:

As required under Sections 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §§ 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3)), I hereby give notification of possible copyright infringement.

1. The original copyrighted material is listed at the URL(s) below:

2. The following URL(s) are infringing upon this copyright:

http://slodive.com/inspiration/pictures-of-hearts/

Additional Information:

I [Zain] took the copyrighted photograph on September 6th, 2004 and published the photograph myself on Flickr with All Rights Reserverd on September 30th, 2006. The infringing 3rd party scrapped, copied it and used my copyrighted work without permission on their site in January of this year, 2012.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Please expeditiously remove or disable all access to the infringing material listed above. Should you require any further information regarding this matter, please contact me at the address, telephone number or email address indicated below:

Digitally Signed,
Bes Zain

Bes Zain
YOUR PHYSICAL ADDRESS HERE

YOUR PHONE NUMBER HERE
YOUR EMAIL HERE

I got an automated reply, stating that my DMCA notice was received. I thought Limestone Networks would also take action quickly, just like Godaddy and HostMonster.

I was wrong. Here’s the automated reply:

Hello Bes Zain,

We have successfully received your abuse complaint regarding the IP/Hostname http://slodive.com.

Our Abuse department processes all requests sent using our online form or emailed to abuse@limestonenetworks.com . Please allow up to 48 hours for resolution and please understand that a personal reply to your complaint may only be sent if more information is necessary.

Thank you for your help in keeping the Internet clean,

Abuse Department

However, that was it: Limestone Networks has not contacted me at all after that. They also took no action from their part regarding my DMCA notice to them.

When a host ignores your DMCA notice completely, you can either go cry in a corner, forget the whole thing, stress out and try to take more action, or relax and try to take more action to protect your copyright.

I recommend relaxing and trying a few more things, while keeping in mind that you may not get the result you want at all without actual physical legal action.

Let’s go through some things you can do if a host ignores your DMCA notices, like in the case when Limestone Networks ignored my DMCA notices.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

What to Do if a Host Ignores Your DMCA Notice?

There will be many times when a host will simply ignore your DMCA, or not take action. For example, Limestone Networks did not responded to my 2 DMCA notices at all, nor took any action on them.

So what would you do in such cases? Well, you have a few options then.

• Send a legal letter via mail to the company with a tracking number.

  Let the host know you mean business, and that you’re going to treat any response or non-response as something that can be brought up in court by you.

• Contact the offending party yourself. I recommend doing this only if the host does not take DMCA notices seriously.

  This worked for me. A week after Limestone Networks did not do anything about my DMCA noticed, I contacted the admin of the site directly.

  This is the exact email I sent that admin. I also CC’ed Limestone Networks abuse department, so that the person would know I was contacting their host also.

  Hello.

  I was notified that one of my Flickr images http://www.flickr.com/photos/besz/256788051 was used without permission on your site at

  http://slodive.com/inspiration/pictures-of-hearts/

  Could you please remove my copyrighted image from your site completely?

  Waiting for your reply. Thanks!

  It’s a very simple email, though it’s very clear about the “was used without permission on your site” part. Notice how when I’m contacting the person directly, I didn’t follow the DMCA protocols.

  You can go with the above personal template OR the DMCA notice. I went the personal route as I realized sending that simpler email directly to the person who copied my content would result in the person understanding the gravity of the situation faster and would not become too defensive.

  The admin actually replied to me within an hour, saying

  Hi Bes,

  Thank you for your email.

  We can taken down your image if you want, but for the fact we are not making users download directly from our site, neither we are hotlinking the images. We were just trying to get your artwork more exposure. Hope you understand. Looking forward to your reply. Thanks.

  –
  Cheers!
  Bhanu

  http://slodive.com/

  I was pleasantly surprised to get a reply, though bored to see yet another feeling of hesitancy in the person to double confirm that I really wanted the image removed. So I replied back

  Hi Bhanu,

  Thanks for the reply. Please take down my images completely from your site, thanks.

  Remember, there’s no point in being online if you get mad at the small or the big things unless you absolutely cannot avoid it. He replied back within the hour with:

  Hi Ben,

  Cool. Your image has been taken down, sorry for any trouble that might have been caused due to this. If anything, please let us know.

  I was Ben, all of a sudden. Then within a few minutes another email came in:

  Sorry for emailing again but I for to mention that it will take some time for cache to regenerate the new page. Please let me know in 12 hours if the image is still showing up and we will purge that page out of the cache. Thank for understanding. Good day.

  I checked, and my photograph was taken down from his site. He stopped using my photograph on his site.

  Awesome!

  So for me, when the host Limestone Networks ignored my direct DMCA email and my DMCA report filed through their website, I turned directly to the people who copied my work. They took it down once they found out, via my emails, that I knew about it and that I wanted them to stop.

• Contact search engines like Google to have the plagiarizing site removed from the search index and results.

  John in the comments below offered this excellent tip: if the host won’t help you, and the person who copied your content won’t stop, you can contact search engines like Google to have the plagiarizing websites removed from search indexes and results.

  This is, in my view, one of the best routes to take. In fact, you can take this route right in the beginning, even when you file the DMCA.

• Call the host’s phone number and ask for DMCA status info over the phone.

  Many hosts avoid talking about DMCA over the phone since the entire topic of DMCA is of a legal nature. However, it is worth noting to anyone from the host on the phone that you are following up on your DMCA and that you have not yet been replied to. Get things moving and have people looking into the situation.

  Companies are less likely to ignore phone call inquiries than email inquiries, since you’re going to have an actual person on the line who has to react to your questions on the spot.

• Contact the host directly and publicly via social media.

  Almost every modern web hosting company has a Twitter and a Facebook account. Interact with them via these networks publicly. Your comment or complaint, about your DMCA being ignored for example, can get removed or deleted via Facebook, but on something like Twitter, it will live on and gain attention. If a host is intentionally or unintentionally not reacting to your DMCA, posting it publicly for millions to see will get them to react.

  This route can create a lot of attention and defensive reaction from the host, so be careful when going this route. For example, I could have pointed out to my 13,000+ Twitter followers that @LimestoneInc hosting ignores DMCA requests. However, I went the more peaceful and relaxing route.

  Amazing how the person plagiarizing my work was more responsive to my communication than the company hosting that plagiarizer.

• Ask the world for help.

  Yes, this is the best thing to do if everything else doesn’t work. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other places have millions of people reading everything that gets posted. Ask the social media world for help. Ask what others would do, ask if anyone knows a special email or contact info for a certain host, and so on. Chances are, you mentioning the very name of the host and the nature of your message will get either someone out there to offer some advice or the host itself to jump in to get things under control.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

What to Do if the Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with a Non-Compliance Rebuttal?

Sometimes, the person who copies your work may reply back to you or their host to “disagree” with your DMCA notice.

When I filed the HostMonster DMCA, the person who copied my entire The Reasoner article actually replied back to me and their host with the following email:

According to this lawsuit http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/reposting-aggregation-fair-use_b38173
I have not broken any laws. I did not copy the entire articale and I even direct my readers to finish reading the article on the originating site. How is it illegal for me to promote some that I found useful?

At first I wanted to react to it, letting them and the host know how the DMCA is an actual United States copyright law, and that the lawsuit is one small example of a case where the entire specifics of the case are not known. I also wanted to let HostMonster know that they have to tell me legally if they choose to ignore the DMCA request.

However, I decided not to react at all, which was the awesome thing to do. I ignored the email completely.

Within 5 days of my DMCA and 4 days of that email, the content was removed. Of course, this new text now appears in place of my original content on http://www.repostpost.com/2012/01/14/warning-signs-of-selfish-people/ :

Warning Signs of Selfish People
by ADMIN on JANUARY 14, 2012
in PSYCHOLOGY, RELATIONSHIPS
This articale has been removed at the copyright holders request

Laws such as the DMCRA are to broad and far reaching ristricting common “fair use” that has been a common practice. This articale was not published to deprive anyone of their rights but, because I found it useful and relevant to promote.

You won’t always be lucky if you ignore such replies. However, always try to work with the host first, and then reach out to the actual person who copied your work as a second step. After that, go through all the steps in the What to Do if a Host Ignores Your DMCA Notice? section above.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

Protect Your Copyright without Stress

The above points and templates should give you a good idea of what DMCA is and how you can use it when someone copies and uses your work without your permission.

Make DMCA and copyright pursuits a pleasant experience for you. Avoid stressing out: it is so easy to right click on any image to save it, copy paste text, and use other people’s content online without permission. When your work gets copied, just relax and carry on with the above DMCA thoughts and procedures.

Have a plan and a single template ready. Customize that template for any DMCA notice you send out.

The entire point of the DMCA in my view should be like everything else in life: while you’re trying to get something done because of someone abusing you or your work, like getting some of your copied content removed, you don’t ruin your life by stressing over it.

Since there is something like the DMCA to help you protect your copyright, use it to your advantage and relax, instead of panicking and stressing out when someone copies your online work.

Jump to: What is DMCA? | Godaddy DMCA | HostMonster DMCA | Limestone Networks DMCA | Host Ignoring Your DMCA Notice? | Person Copying Your Work Replies Back with Non-Compliance? | Protect Copyright without Stress | Are You Protecting Your Copyright?

What do You Think of DMCA? How are You Protecting Your Copyright?

Have you ever had your work copied? Have you ever filed or dealt with the DMCA? Have you ever had an unfair DMCA filed against you? Who is your host, and what is their DMCA policy?

What do you think of Godaddy, HostMonster, and Limestone Networks based on their reaction to my DMCA notices?

Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

If you’re reading this article anywhere other than in your feed reader with the Social Improve feeds or on the Social Improve website, chances are you are reading this content on a site which has copied the Social Improve article without permission. Let me know about it. I’ll take care of it then through a DMCA.

Thanks for reading!

This guest post is by William Eve.

Have you thought about your online assets? What will you leave behind in your digital world, should you die?

An asset is something of value that a person owns. There are different categories of assets, such as tangible, intangible and digital. Yes, digital was added to the asset list.

Tangibles can be anything from houses to bank accounts, even family photos. Intangibles are things like copyrights, patents, and everything else that is not physical, or that ‘brands’ you or your company.

Digital Assets

Digital assets are electronic items that are either on your computer or on a website. They are things like business documents, blogs, domain names, online businesses, PayPal accounts, online investment accounts, even profiles on social media sites.

These are things that are lingering out in cyberspace that will possibly not be found or bequeathed to your family, should you die, without the proper steps taken.

Realizing that your online accounts are assets is what will determine their future. Think about your domains and the advertising revenue coming from AdSense? What about your PayPal account and your blogs revenue? Will your family know what to do with all of these things to ensure your work will benefit them? What about your photos in Flickr or Facebook? The half-finished novel stored in Google Docs or elsewhere? Will your family know how to access all of them?

Your Digital Will

Generally, when assets are not located or claimed, the government steps in and basically takes them. Have you heard of sites like “unclaimed money” where many bank and financial accounts have money sitting in them – that was never claimed? Most likely because the member died and not a soul knew that money was there.

That is why a ‘Digital Will’ along with digital asset management is so important – so that things that are valuable – do not lie unclaimed or dormant in cyberspace.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Start by checking into an account guardian:

An account guardian allows users to make a list of all of their digital assets, and designate one or two people as executors, to manage it after death, making certain that all of your cash and other assets get transferred to your heirs, as well as closing accounts.

Entrustit.com has this very important product under the name Account Guardian.

Create a Digital Will

The digital will is probably the most important document to aid your family in finding all of your digital assets.

Many people amend their existing will to include their digital assets, or create one online through sites such as LegacyLocker.com, or Entrustit.com

Even sites such as Ziggur.org can manage your online presence, offering your family relief during their loss, and keep all of your digital assets and digital life in one place. Ziggur offers all information stored using only one password, which is convenient because keeping a password list can become outdated as much as we change passwords.

Digital List:

This list is essential to a good Digital Will, because it lists every item that has anything to do with your online life. It should include photos, videos, investment and bank accounts, memberships, income possibilities, PayPal account, domain names and whatever else has to do with your digital life.

This document should be the biggest part of your digital legacy and stored somewhere safe for your family to access.

Power of Attorney:

This legal document allows an executor or family member to act on your behalf should you die, or become incapacitated. They need to be prepared prior to death.

A legal representative, preferably the one who designed your Living Will or Trust will need to prepare one, as they need to be notarized and in legal format.

Make sure you name at least 2 people, in case one predeceases the other.

Executor:

Choose one or two close family members or friends, as executors for your Digital and your Living Will/Trust. They will be responsible for carrying out your wishes, and can ensure the smooth transition for family members receiving your assets in a legal and uncomplicated manner.

Not only will they be the representatives of your wishes, they will act as the distributor of your assets, eliminating the typical scrambling and confusion of family members.

These are the basic steps that will save your assets from becoming state property, as well as offer your peace of mind. Family will need to be guided, and showing that you are responsible enough to have your affairs in order, will leave a lasting impression for them.

Take the time to look into some of these options, and get started. We never know what tomorrow brings.

What do You Think?

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have a Digital Will? Will you get a Digital Will? Why or why not?

Share in the comments below.

This guest post is by G34 Media.

Google Plus is the new social network in town and it has become the go to network already for many on the web.

Everyone from blog owners to business mavericks and lots more in between use Google Plus for outreach, marketing, content sharing and or to mix and mingle with like minded peers.

Whatever your reason for becoming a Google + fan, one thing is clear. Without followers you’re not going to have too much fun.

So the adage as is usual in social media is that the more the merrier. But how does one grow their Circles? How does one go from ten followers to hundred and more?

Below we present a few ideas and tips on how to do just this via a few simple methods and tricks.

1. Do Outreach From Your Blog

Use your blog to garner more followers via a special contest where the method of entry requires one to sign up to your Google + circle, or perhaps write an article that addresses how awesome Google Plus is and why others should join in and become fans too.

Your blog should be a driving force in all your social media campaigns, so use it wisely and often. Also don’t forget to include the appropriate widgets and buttons on your site to allow others to easily and quickly add you to their respective networks.

2. Ask Your Readers

If you want others to do something, sometimes the only way to know for sure if they will do it is to simply ask. Want more followers? Ask. Place a clear and prominent call to action on your site asking for others to join your new Google + page and if they do so, maybe throw in some special reward like a free ebook, report or other similar goodie.

This idea is highly under-utilized yet highly effective.

3. Guest Post

This idea involves the strategic use of guest articles on popular and well trafficked blogs to garner a certain end result. That might be leads for a new product, joint venture or in this case grow your Google + following.

Most sites that accept guest posts will have a page dedicated to this practice, so try to find blogs by performing a Google search with the query of niche + guest posts, so if you run a travel blog you would type in “travel guest posts” and then contact the blog owner to ask if you can submit a guest article.

If you get the go, then write a fantastic article and at the end of it or in the BIO area include a link to your Google Plus profile page and flat out ask others to follow you.

How do You Grow your Google+ Followers?

There are numerous ways to grow your followers, however the three ideas above should get you going in the right direction. Already have a good following? Let us know your tips on how you’ve done it.

I recently came across yet another idea of using a plugin instead of your functions.php file.

It’s interesting reading such viewpoints, since many theme developers insist that you put all your functions in their theme’s functions.php files.

Your own custom WordPress functions allow you to extend WordPress in your own way, with or without external plugins or scripts.

Your WordPress theme functions.php file gets loaded at the same time as your site, so your functions get loaded instantly. The theme functions.php file is one of the most common venues to insert your own functions into WordPress.

I always put my functions in my WooTheme’s functions.php file, allowing me an easy way to manage all my custom code. That does make me depend on the current theme a bit.

New Solution: Use a Functions Plugin Instead

A new way of thinking is starting to challenge the popular method of putting your functions into the theme’s functions.php file. That’s good for me, as WordPress is part of my online life currently, and I’m trying my best to optimize everything in my offline and online life.

This time, Dave from Do It With WordPress recommends using a plugin to replace most or all the functions you place in your functions.php files.

Use a Functions plugin instead of functions.php?

One thing I like about Dave approach is the simplicity: Dave recommends using a single Functions plugin file where you stick in all your functions and leave them their for eternity. You could change your themes without having to worry about your functions. All you have to do then is either enable or disable your plugin, and everything will work.

All your functions will be in a single plugin file compatible with any theme you switch to.

Dave also says that using a functions plugin gives your functions the exact same priority and power that they would get if they were in the functions.php file. That means your functions plugin will have your functions.php functions working the exact same way, without you having to change anything.

Where do you put your WordPress functions?

What do you think of this idea? Do you put all your functions in the functions.php file? Do you have a plugin with all your custom functions in it?

Would you recommend dividing between the two areas instead, putting some functions in the functions.php file and some in a functions plugin?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below to share what you think or what you do on your site.

Thanks for reading!

WordPress Crons do amazing things. From allowing you to schedule automatic full or database backups of your WordPress to having posts published in the future, Crons allow you to do almost anything you can think of.

WordPress Crons, however, do require some visit to any public page of your main site to trigger the cron to run. That could create problems for many people, specially Multisite owners where Crons are set to run on a Multisite level for all sub-sites, and yet where the main Multisite domain may not get any traffic.

Among the thousand other things Tasker can do via your Android phone, Tasker can also easily visit your website.

I’ve been using Tasker for a long time, and since last week started using Tasker to trigger Crons on Multisites which don’t get much or any traffic. And it works beautifully.

Since you can use Tasker to visit any website at any time automatically, once or regularly, you can use Tasker to trigger your WordPress Crons. Here’s how to do it.

What is Tasker for Android?

Tasker for Android gives you wings!

Want to notify yourself of an important task when you’re at the shopping mall? Tasker can detect your location and do that. Want to silence your ringer after 11pm? Tasker does that. Anything your phone is capable of doing, Tasker can allow you to control it and bend it in any manner you wish.

Social Improve will post some tutorials and info on Tasker on a regular basis.

Today, let’s focus on using Tasker for Android to visit any website automatically via your phone and also, if you wish, trigger crons on your Multisites.

Use a Tasker Android Profile to Visit Websites or Trigger WordPress Crons

Since all that’s needed for WordPress to run scheduled crons is a visit to any part of your main WordPress where the cron is scheduled, we’re going to create a Tasker profile to have your Android browser visit your site at any time of the day, stay on it for a few seconds, and then exit the browser.

You have 2 options to accomplish this: download and use the profile I’ve created for you to learn from that, OR create the profile from scratch and see how it’s done in detail.

Both options are outlined below.

Easy Option 1: Download the Profile

Here is my Tasker profile that you can download, save onto your phone or SD card, and then import into your Tasker.

Right click and save Tasker Profile to Trigger WordPress Crons – Trigger_WP_Crons.prf.xml

Remember to change any values you wish, specially the website link, to your own values after you’ve imported this profile into Tasker.

Long Option 2: Walk Through the Full Steps

Taking the long route? Awesome!

Here are all the steps, with associated screenshots, to help you create your own profile from scratch. Follow these simple steps and the associated pictures to setup a Tasker profile called “Trigger WP Crons”, which can be any other name you wish by the way. This is a one-time setup. Tasker will do everything automatically from then onward.

By default, all the “Ok” and “Accept” buttons in Tasker are green check boxes. All red cross marks mean “No”, “Cancel” and “OMG! WTH?”

If you’re unsure about any step, ask away in the comments below!

1. Open Tasker and create a new profile by hitting the big green plus + button.

   The screenshot below shows all the active Profiles I have.

   Your screen will either be empty or will have differently named profiles, unless you and I think the exact same (or one of us is copying the other).

   

2. Give your new profile any name and press the ok (green check mark) button.

   I usually pick names that will tell me instantly what they’re about, like “Trigger WP Crons.”

   

3. In the “First Context” step, you’ll choose the condition that will make Tasker start doing what you want it to do.

   For our case, we want Tasker to visit our website OR websites in question after the scheduled time of our Cron. If your scheduled cron OR plugin is set to run at, let’s say, 11pm, we can tell Tasker to run at 11:05pm or any time after 11pm.

   Because we’re dealing with time, choose the “Time” Context on this step.

   

4. Tasker will now show you some time options that you can use to run Tasker from any start time to any end time, and to run Tasker once or repeatedly at such times forever or as long as you wish.

   If your WordPress schedules are at 11pm, let’s tell Tasker to run this Tasker Profile at 11:05pm. Choose “23:05″ and “23:10″ on this screen.

   Also check the “Repeat” option, since we want Tasker to do this every night at 11:05pm from now on. Enabling the “Repeat” option will let you choose how often you want Tasker to run this task again and again. Choose “12 hours”, since we want Tasker to check if it’s 11:05pm, in order to trigger your WordPress Cron, every 12 hours. Don’t worry: even if Tasker checks at 11:05am (morning), it will not run your profile because of your specified “23:05″ and “23:10″ time frame.

   Press the ok button then.

   

5. Next screen will allow you to choose a Task from a list of Tasks you may have already created OR allow you to create a new one. Tasks are what Tasker will actually do at the time you specified, like visiting your site.

   Choose “New Task” on this screen.

   Your actual screen will again look different since the names you see in my screens are what I’ve named my different Tasker elements for my needs.

   

6. You can (and should) name your tasks also, to make them easier to identify.

   I’ll name this task “Visit Site.” Name everything you can from the beginning in order to remember and identify things easily later on.

   Choose ok.

   

7. Now you’ll see the “Task Edit/Visit Site” screen, or a similarly named screen depending on what name you chose for your tasks.

   This is where you’ll perform the final steps of your Tasker profile. This is where you tell Tasker what to do when it’s 11:05pm.

   Press the blue plus + button to create a new task.

   

8. You’ll now see a “Select Action Category” menu, which lists all the things you can do with your phone.

   It has a ton of options and several sub-options each, so don’t worry if it looks overwhelming. It’s usually a lot for me too, though I focus only on the names to get to where I want.

   In our case, choose “Net” on this screen.

   

9. You’ll now see several “Net” actions that Tasker can do for you.

   What we want is to browser your website, so choose “Browse URL” option.

   

10. This will load the “Browse URL” screen, where in the URL field you can type in your WordPress website URL where your WordPress crons are scheduled.

    This can be anything on your site, from the front page itself to any specific page.

    Tasker or your Android keyboard might capitalize the “H” in “http” portion of what you enter. No worries: ignore that and carry on, or simply edit the “H” into an “h” manually.

    I put in “http://socialimprove” here. You put your website link, that you want Tasker to visit, in this URL field. Hit ok.

    

11. Next we want Tasker to close the browser after, let’s say, 15 seconds of being on the site.

    At this step you should be back on the “Task Edit / Visit Site” screen, where you’ll see your Browse URL task from the previous step.

    Hit the blue plus + sign again to create another task.

    

12. On the “Select Action Category”, this time choose the “Task” action.

    Among other things, the “Task” action contains the commands to tell Tasker to wait as long as you wish before carrying on the next action.

    We want Tasker to wait 15 seconds before returning to the home screen. Hit the “Task” option.

    

13. Now you’ll choose “Wait” action under the “Task” action.

    Wait tells Tasker how long to wait before going to the next action.

    

14. The “Wait” options menu has several ways to specify a time frame during which Tasker will pause the current profile from performing the next step.

    It may look complicated with so many time options, though it’s fairly easy to work with. We only want the “Seconds” option, so slide the “Seconds” tab using the plus button in front of it until it says “15″ seconds.

    Hit the ok green check mark button then.

    

15. You’ll now be returned to the “Task Edit / Visit Site” menu again, where you’ll see your “Browse URL” and “Wait” tasks.

    If everything looks good so far, hit the blue plus + button one last time so that we can tell Tasker to add the final task of visiting the Home screen to close the browser.

    Tip: in Android, you don’t have to exit applications. If you are on the home screen or turn off your screen display, Android automatically manages your memory and applications, turning off unneeded resources as needed.

    That is why we’re simply going to visit the Home screen to have the browser automatically close off when Android automatically realizes it’s not being used anymore.

    You don’t have to do anything in Android other than to visit the home screen to exit applications.

    

16. On the “Select Action Category” screen, choose “App.”

    

17. You’ll see several “App” actions. Choose “Go Home” action.

    

18. You’ll now see the “Go Home” options.

    Ignore everything on this page, to keep your sanity like I do in the face of all the power Tasker offers.

    Hit the green ok check mark button.

    

19. You’ll now be taken to your Task Edit / Visit Site screen, where you’ll see all your newly tasks.

    On this screen, if you wish, you can hit the bottom right “Play” button to test your settings. This will Start your browser, wait 15 seconds, and then go to the home page. You can open Tasker again after this to be returned to this exact screen.

    Hit the ok button again to finalize everything.

    

20. You’re done now!

    On the resulting screen, where you’ll see all your profiles, scroll down to your newly created “Trigger WP Crons” profile, or whatever name you chose. Your actual screen will look different, since I’ve many other profiles there also.

    You’ll see a green check box in front of your newly created profile. This tells you that your new Tasker profile is active and will thus run as defined by you.

    If everything looks good, hit the bottom left green check box button. This button will be used by you always, as it tells Tasker to be active and to run in the background running all your active profiles.

    If you hit the red cross marks button here, Tasker will be paused, or disabled, until the next time you manually run Tasker and hit the green check mark button.

    

Awesome!

Your Android phone will now, every night at 11:05pm, load your website in your Android browser, stay on your website for 15 seconds, and then simply go back to the home screen.

This will make WordPress trigger any 11:00pm scheduled crons you have on that site.

Everything is automatic. You can keep sleeping through your scheduled cron triggers. Or you can keep playing Killing Floor and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at this time, like I do.

What about non-Android users?

Tasker and the similar Locale apps are for Android only, so you’ll have find out similar apps for your phone. iPhone users shouldn’t have to worry though, since iPhone has been around longer and has a very strong developer base.

Google should help you find out an app similar to Tasker for your phone. Do similar Google searches for your other non-iPhone phones to find out something similar.

Post in the comments below if you can’t find something similar for your specific phone, OR if you find something other than Tasker that helps you do the same thing.

What do you think of using Tasker to trigger Scheduled WordPress Crons?

What do you think of this Tasker Profile? Can you use this to visit websites automatically at specified times? How do you deal with WordPress Crons for websites that do not get enough or any traffic?

Please share in the comments below. Thanks!

The WordPress team just announced WordPress 3.3.1 . The first upgrade of the year fixes 15 issues.

You can upgrade via any of the following 3 methods:

1. Single Sites: Visit Dashboard –> Updates as a Site Admin.
2. Multisites: Visit Network Admin –> Dashboard –> Updates as a Network Admin.
3. Manually by downloading WordPress 3.3.1 and then using any FTP program to upload it over your existing files.

Be sure to follow any extra steps, as shown by your specific WordPress admin, to finish the upgrade process.

This can be specially true for Multisites, where you have to take an extra clicking step to upgrade all the sites in your Multisite, by clicking the “Update Network” link under Network Admin –> Dashboard –> Updates area.

If you’re upgrading via FTP, be sure to log into your WordPress admin panel after you finish uploading the updated files manually.

One of the New Year resolutions you should make for your online life, if you haven’t already, is to keep your online sites updated at all times. Slacking off on your website, even in the back-end, is so 2011′ish!

Will you upgrade right away?

Do you usually upgrade to the latest WordPress versions right away? Or do you usually wait a few days or even weeks to see how others are rating such updates?

Happy upgrading!

Is Facebook the new MySpace? That’s the biggest question many people have been wondering about in 2011. And with 2012 upon us, that question is more vibrant than ever before.

Facebook has gone from having the cleanest and most consistent social networking layout to probably having one of the most complicated layout of all the majority of the sites I use daily. Twitter, Google+, and even the sophisticated LinkedIn is easier to use and manage than Facebook at the moment. And in some areas, Facebook is now as difficult to use as MySpace once was and currently is.

That is not a good sign, is it?

Every hour someone out there is either supporting or bashing all the new things Facebook is trying, adding and releasing. And there is a good reason for such reactions.

Where is Facebook headed?

Do you think Facebook is the New MySpace?

MySpace was dethroned because Facebook came up with something simpler and better. Right now, it seems Facebook is not the simpler and better network anymore. In fact, data shows that users are starting to spend less time on Facebook now compared to before, specially when Facebook keeps introducing new features to try and compete with everything else online.

But, is Facebook really the new MySpace? Or are users (including myself) simply used to the simplicity of the original-Facebook era and are associating any complexity in layout and controls with the complexity that doomed MySpace functionality?

Do these qualities make Facebook the New MySpace?

1. Simplicity has been killed
2. Unwanted Information Spam. It’s actually official that Facebook will show you information from groups you’re not part of.
3. Unwanted Photo Tags
4. Unwanted Group Additions. It’s also official that Facebook does not allow you to moderate your group memberships – you can be added to any Facebook group by your contacts without your permission.
5. Spam Messages
6. App Status Post Spam
7. App Invitation Spam
8. Facebook Layout is going from being extra simple to being extra complex.

   This was the biggest selling point of Facebook back when it was taking on MySpace. This is also one of the 2 big reasons people back then switched to Facebook. However, the Facebook layout is now getting more and more complicated as more new features are added to everyone’s profiles.

Do you think Facebook is becoming the new MySpace?

Click here to view the embedded video.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Facebook is headed in the direction of MySpace? Do you think all these new features are going to end up turning users away when something new and simpler, like Google+, comes along or gets more attention? Or do you think Facebook, even with all its features, is still never going to face the MySpace fate and will easily avoid being taken over by Google+ or something else?

Share your opinions or questions by commenting below. Thanks for reading!

This guest post is by Tammy Kahn Fennell.

Getting your information and ideas out to your target audience is what social media marketing is all about. But is anyone reading what you have to say? Are you neglecting one network in favor of another?

Here are 5 tools that cross post, and are free (or nearly free) to use!

1. MarketMeSuite: Social Marketing Management
2. Buffer: Social Timing
3. LiveFyre: Social Commenting
4. Constant Contact: Social Email
5. Instagram: Social Photo Sharing

1. Social Marketing

Let’s start with the first element is a cross promotional dashboard, MarketMeSuite. MarketMeSuite is an absolute juggernaut of a Marketing tool. It takes the best elements of your favorite management platforms, mixes in geo-targeting and pro-active marketing, and gives you one giant place to share,. schedule, auto-post RSS, and post in real time to Facebook at the same time as posting to Twitter and Linkedin. You can also view your newsfeeds and add comments from inside the app.

Why Is This Important? You need a centralized place to monitor all of your marketing efforts, and allow your entire team to work together. MarketMeSuite provides the “ground control” every social media campaign needs.

2. Social Timing

There is a science behind posting. Knowing where your customers are, and when is the best time to tweet is really important. You can do a lot of this manually in some of the full serviced dashboards, but what about when you’re on the net, and you see something that would be great to send out to your followers? With Buffer you can just click on the easy to install plugin and the message is queued up for times you choose when you can’t physically be there. These messages can go to Twitter and Facebook.

Why Is This Important? It’s simple, but based on some data they collected CTR on Tweets of links shared by Buffer increased by 200% after 3 weeks of regular use. (Free up to 10 tweets in your Buffer)

3. Social Commenting

If you don’t have a decent commenting plugin installed on your blog, don’t waste another second. In fact, don’t even read to the end of this post. Go right now and try LiveFyre. It’s free, and it’s taken social commenting to a new level. Users are more engaged with the story, tweeting out their comment is a breeze, and it really facilitates discussion on the blog, AND across Twitter and Facebook. In one easy click you can send a message saying “You were just mentioned in this conversation…” with a link back to the blog post. It’s amplification on steroids once it gets going.

Why Is This Important? Perpetuating a conversation gives your blog post a longer life, and if you can manage to get it into the social media sphere, you can harness that inherent virality that comes with it.

4. Old school e-mail marketing gone social

Constant Contact

Don’t forget about old school e-mail marketing. Creating newsletters and e-mail campaigns is still as important is it was pre-social media, but now you can leverage even more from each communication. Constant Contact has a social sharing feature, so you can share your email across Twitter and Facebook in one click.

Why Is This Important? Checking your analytics is a great way to see how far a message has spread. There’s a section that tracks how “Social” your e-mail has gone, which is super helpful for measuring a campaign’s social impact.

5. Mobile Photos

Instagram

Exclusive for iPhone, Instagram lets you turn your pictures into photographic masterpieces and share them across Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

Why Is This Important? It’s great to show your fans and followers another side of you and your business. If a tweet is worth 140 characters a photo has got to be worth 10,000!

Key Take Away:

These days you absolutely have to multitask in life and in business, and your marketing message must do the same. Using this amplification tools will help you market smarter, increase click rates, reach further, and get you the most bang for your post.

Tried any of these services? Have any tips or service you would add to the list? Please leave your comments below.

When was the last time you got a promotional poster, either handed to you or through your mail, that you simply threw away within a few minutes? That’s your instinct, knowing how to deal with all the paper ads that you see everywhere. The same way we deal with email ads, we deal with paper ads. We try to get rid of them, or ignore them, as soon as possible. Same thing goes with business cards. You may get one at a restaurant or from a co-worker, but once you put it into your pocket, it becomes another piece of paper that you do not care about.

Now think a bit differently. When was the last time you got a glossy poster in your hand? Or a glossy business card? Or anything that was new, shiny and a beautiful glossy piece of work? You can probably remember the many times that happened, but you probably do not remember the last time you threw away a glossy poster, or anything glossy, as fast as you tend to throw away any non-glossy paper. That’s the power of shining paper, poster or anything else.

We value it more than other things because it feels more premium. You value it more. You cherish it more.

Next Day Flyers offers such glossy poster printing for all your needs. If you want your printing done right, try Next Day Flyers right now.

Next Day Flyers offers premium poster printing at awesome prices

Unlike many online companies of today, Next Day Flyers is an actual successful and physical company located in Rancho Dominguez, California. The company has gone to great lengths to make sure you are as comfortable on their website as you would be dealing with them in person. The entire website is easy to navigate, which is one of the main most important parts of any kind of online shopping. Their Getting Started section actually helps you figure out what you want, how you want it and when you want it.

They have dozens of templates, samples, sizes and options for everything from business cards to CD inserts to magnets, posters, postcards and much, much more. Also, any orders you send in by 6 pm PST get printed and sent out the next business day, guaranteed. Compare that to how long it takes for your neighborhood FedEx Kinko’s to print your order (it usually takes them at least 2 business days to be done with any big orders). They also have their extensive Custom Printing section, where you can fully customize your entire order. This special section allows you to literally choose everything from paper type, finished size, color, coating, folding, rounded corners option, and much, much more.

Other perks of having your posters printed with Next Day Flyers

Whether you’re a business or an individual, you get a lot of benefits for having your prints taken care of by Next Day Flyers. In addition to getting custom prints of almost any kind done, something which is almost unheard of at most other online print shops, you get the following benefits also:

• If you’re in the neighborhood, you can actually walk in and have your printing needs taken care of. This clearly shows their dedication to making sure you get what you want, and that you feel 100% satisfied dealing with an online print company.



• After you submit an order, you can actually call them anytime to find out the status of your order. Try finding that easily with many other online poster printing companies.
• They’re environmental friendly: they literally use certified (the best quality possible) recycled materials.
• If you are not satisfied with your order for any reason, Next Day Flyers will reprint your order to your full satisfaction within 30 days, for FREE!
• They offer live chat. Have any questions? Chat with someone instantly to get the answers or status updates you need now!
• and much, much more!

Chat or call them to find out what they can do for you.

Check out Next Day Flyers and let me know what you think

Check out Next Day Flyers for printing, glossy posters, or just to test out the different things you can have. With the online and the offline worlds competing with one another so fiercely, you have to do everything possible online and offline to make sure that your message gets heard, seen and absorbed effectively. Having your message, idea or picture on a glossy poster print is one such way to achieve that.

Have you tried Next Day Flyers so far? Will you try them? What do you think of their options and prices?

Let me know what you think of poster printing in general and Next Day Flyers in particular in the comments below. Thanks!

In today’s world there are still millions of businesses in every country that have no online presence. Such companies either do not have the resources to focus on the online business or are simply avoiding the online phenomenon and sticking to the idea of existing only offline. Because of that very fact, businesses which embrace the online world with full force often do much better for themselves and their customers compared to the competition. It is always interesting for me to come across businesses whose sole target is the offline customer base via an offline product, and turn it into a purely brilliant online marketplace to thrive as a company and to offer customers an unparalleled service.

Signazon is such a company. Dealing solely with signs and printing, the company is a prime example of how to take any offline business and turn it into a landmark online service that actually turns the company into an online service catering very efficiently to your offline needs. You should observe how they do their business online and also see what they have to offer in order to both get good prints and signs for yourself [everyone should get them, including website owners].

Signazon covers everything for your signs and print needs – all via one website

Signazon.com is basically a one-stop online shop for all your sign needs. Their sign printing includes hundreds of different materials and sign options, completely custom sizes, and full-color digital printing. They offer hundreds of free designer templates that can be personalized with your own images and the option upload your own complete design also if you want full creative control over your brand or message. Their site from our testing is user friendly and informative with instant pricing, instant proofs, design tips, and installation guides. The site caters to everyone. In fact, you can even find Yard Signs for your own personal or even commercial use. And as is the case with the rest of their offering and their website, you can fine tune even that to your exact liking.

Everything on the site is of course, after you order or design it, treated like an established retailer. You order your signs or prints and if you’re ok with what you see, you order them for delivery to anywhere. Shipping seems to be on the cheaper, more affordable side [check the shipping rates]. In addition to you being able to save all your design/sign work in your own account for future use, you can also sign up as an affiliate or a reseller and earn money for sending them customers.

Customizations and Variety

You can customize everything from colors to have something specific for your car brand, model and year of manufacture even.

I played a bit with their car window decals tools, and it was very easy to use. Ever see all those lame car stickers that you always notice while driving? Why is it so hard to have a really good custom sticker instead of all the boring ones that everyone gets? I already have so many good custom sticker and decal ideas; I might end up ordering more than just one or two so that I can have something random showing to other drivers [from my car] depending on the weather or the day of the week.

Ease of Use

You can design or customize things from scratch. Just like an image editor!

I really like that last part since it brings the power of the offline versatility into your hands via simple mouse clicks. I tried their “Click to Chat” service to chat live with them and ask a few [dummy] questions, and was pleased with the answers. They knew what I was referring to, and for anything complex I asked [on purpose ], they either had the answer or told me they’ll look it up. And they did look it up. I like that. Try getting answer to anything you wish for any of your questions at any major offline print shop in your area. You’ll be sure to realize that you should hurry up so that the customers waiting behind you in line at that offline store get a chance to take your position too.

Try Signazon and share your thoughts

Try Signazon and see what you think. Keep in mind the traditional offline models of similar businesses and how Signazon has instead focused on being the one-stop online shop for all your signs and prints needs.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks!

This guest post is by David Tang.

John Chow recently reviewed ways of making money online besides blogging, where he specifically focused on my 300K Page Job Search In-a-Box turnkey service. There is a popular formula for online success that the majority of people follow. That formula is to create a blog, write quality articles on an ongoing basis, slap on some Adsense, and continue to churn out those articles. Rinse and repeat with another blog, and another, until you’re back to working… erm, many, many hours a week.

This formula is popular for a few reasons: it’s simple, low-cost, and reliable.  As long as you can continue churning out articles regularly and constantly, sooner or later, those Adsense pennies will start accumulating to dollars and more.

It’s also easy to set up.

Can Megasites help you where blogs can't?

Moreover, it’s a time drain.  It takes time to brainstorm ideas and even more time to convert that idea into a well written article.

So, what’s the faster path to online success, then? Try a megasite instead.

A megasite is a website with a ton of content–10,000+ pages, 100,000+ pages, 1,000,000+ pages even.  By its very nature, we’re no longer talking about personal blogs, because it would take forever (unless you literally have an army of writers) to churn out 1,000,000 articles for an individual blog. We are talking about content that is automatically generated. Such paths take only hours to setup, and their return on investment can last a lifetime.

Examples of Megasites

Here are some categories of sites that fall under the megasite umbrella:

• Search Engines
• Social Networking Communities
• Discussion Forums
• Business Directories
• Social Bookmarking Sites
• Article Directories

The beauty–perhaps genius–behind architecting a megasite is that it doesn’t rely on one man’s or woman’s (yea, I’m referring to you) manual effort.  In order to create enough scale to be considered a megasite, the site must rely mainly on other sources for content.

Now, looking at the categories of sites enumerated above, there are two main sources of this content:

Social participation

By this, we are referring to leveraging the masses to contribute content on an ongoing basis.  In this way, you are essentially creating a team of thousands, if not millions, of content creators.  Great examples of these are forums, social networking communities, and social bookmarking sites.  These sites provide a platform for people to sign up and contribute content.  Free labor, really.

Data sets

A data set is a collection of information around a particular subject and typically contain millions of “pieces” of information in it.  A great example of this would be a business directory, such as Yelp or YellowPages.  They contain an individual page for every local business in the US (and beyond).  How many businesses do you think there are in the US?  Well, according to the US Census, there are over 5 million small businesses with less than 20 employees in the US.  That’s already 5MM+ pages.  Then, think of all the listing pages–pages for each state, zip code, region, etc.  Even Google is an example of this concept.  All Google does is index the biggest data set of all–i.e. the World Wide Web.  They don’t create any content themselves.

Data sets are also easily obtainable for free.  In fact, publicly available data sets can be found everywhere online.  Tons of non-profit organizations serve the sole purpose of creating data sets and releasing them for the public to consume.  Plus, the major sites (e.g. Google, eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, you name it) offer APIs that allow us to easily access their data sets.

Do Megasites Work?

Ever notice that the people who are trying to make the big bucks online (e.g. VC-backed Internet startups) almost all aim at creating a megasite of some sort?  In fact, they maintain a blog as a supporting web property that serves the purpose of driving traffic to their megasite.

Okay, so you may think… Great, a megasite sounds nifty and all, but how can we create one?  Don’t we need a team of developers for this stuff?  Won’t that be expensive?

It’s not. Look around. Many sites including the famous Reuters offer their content for licensing. Licensed RSS feeds are available everywhere too. I myself have a solution called “300K Page Job Search In-a-Box” aimed at the niche job search market, and a live case study showing the results. The beauty of it? Not only are you receiving updated content from Indeed’s Publisher API, but Indeed will also pay for you traffic you send their way. Indeed is US’s largest job search engine, by the way.

As an avid reader of Social Improve, I know how Bes focuses a lot on trying to reduce the time one wastes online. The amount of time you can put in a megasite helps that. Sure, working on a megasite requires real work, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of work one has to put into blogging if that’s all they do. The beauty of megasite is that it requires setup and your preferred configuration and then it works on its own.

So, there you have it!  The road more travelled may be blogging, but it can be a long and arduous one.  Take a look down the path of a megasite and you may see greener, softer pastures. You can even combine blogging with these other sources of online traffic and income, because that’s what every successful online person does – have multiple sources of income.

Good luck!

Netflix recently announced new Membership plans and prices for everyone. As expected, Netflix blog readers are flocking in great numbers to complain about it. Netflix remains resilient about the changes, insisting that they’re for the greater good.

Whether that “greater good” is good for both the customers and the company, only the customers or only the company is at this point undecided in terms of a long-term strategy. In terms of the customer viewpoint, the move is seen as a breaking point for many to start finding alternatives or to cut back on either streaming plans or the DVD plan.

The old prices that were in effect until today were divided into 2 popular plans:

Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming and Unlimited 1 DVD out at-a-time, for $9.99 a month
Plan 2: Unlimited Streaming only, for $7.99 a month

They are becoming separate plans, however. Both Unlimited Streaming and Unlimited DVDs will become $7.99 each, costing you a total of $15.98 for Plan 1 from now on for new customers and from September 1st, 2011 for existing customers. Read on for reasons behind the price increases, and for details on the new prices and plans.

Reasons Netflix Increased Membership Prices

1. Streaming income alone is not enough at the moment for Netflix to bring out newest shows for Instant Watch users.

   This was clear back in June of this year when Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said at the D9 interview:

   Consumers want us to have all the new stuff. But it’s very expensive, and we can’t afford all the new stuff and offer the service for $8. So at $8, we’re a compliment to the new-release business. “The new-release business will stay as pay-per-view, because that’s a higher margin for the distributor.”
   

2. DVDs still make money.

   Movie studios are promoting it, and customers are still buying it. Netflix apparently has decided to stick with that option for as long as possible and with as much ROI [return on investment, or profit to be more precise] as possible.

3. TV and Film industry still gives Netflix headaches over streaming licenses.

   Netflix has to negotiate deals for all movies and TV shows. In contrast, DVDs come and go as agreed licenses. Netflix does not have to negotiate prices or anything for DVDs similar to what it has to do for Streaming customers. Hollywood keeps making Netflix negotiate more for streaming licenses. In addition to that, TV shows on DVDs are much cheaper to get and sell for Netflix, compared to Netflix having to actually pay for TV show streaming.

4. Around 40% of Netflix customers are still DVD only customers.

   Around 61% of Netflix customers stream something through the service as of June 2011. That means over 9 million customers are still DVD only customers. In Netflix’s logic, if 9 million customers can pay Netflix for a DVD only subscription, many others out of the 24+ million customers will be willing to pay extra for DVD service in addition to paying separately for a streaming service.

5. The competition in the online streaming is growing strong, so maintaining a stronger and more expensive DVD business is the logical choice for them.

   Amazon Prime and Hulu are striking at Netflix hard, with Hulu even snatching The Criterion Collection from Netflix in its entirely. Netflix knows the future is in streaming, but at this time, Netflix cannot simply give up the DVD business nor let it be cheap because it needs all the money it can get from every possible method to keep pumping into the streaming business. The fewer streaming movies Netflix has, the more it should offer via its DVD area or risk losing customer completely to Amazon Prime, Hulu or even Comcast Xfinity.

   Here is Netflix’s VP of Communications, Steve Swasey, talking about Netflix’s future, the competition and the future of movies and TV shows:

   Watch the full episode. See more Nightly Business Report.

6. Netflix DVD division, while being favored less than the streaming division, is still profitable and more popular when it comes to all the newest movies and TV shows.

   All latest movies and TV shows mostly come out on Netflix DVD before they come out on Netflix Instant Watch. This is outside of Netflix’s control, as it is related to #1 above: streaming licenses. That is why many customers prefer paying the current $9.99 for DVD plans instead of the current $7.99 for the streaming plan. Netflix is assuming that such customers will be willing to pay $7.99 fully and separately for the DVD plan in addition to the streaming plan.

7. Netflix wants to pump up the importance of the Streaming plan.

   Even though the current old pricing of $7.99 for streaming and $9.99 for DVD plus streaming reflects a focus on streaming, it actually showed the popularity of DVDs. In reality, no longer is the streaming option a $2 add-on. With this pricing. Netflix Instant Watch is a service of its own, just like the Netflix DVD option. If a DVD customer wants to move on to the Streaming plan, which is the future, they will also have to pay the full price instead of simply paying an add-on fee.

Full List of new Netflix Prices

Here are all the current new plans available to every customer, new or existing, available via the Netflix Subscription area:

Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs)

Unlimited Streaming : $7.99 a month.

Unlimited DVDs (no streaming)

1 DVD out at-a-time : $7.99 a month
2 DVD out at-a-time : $11.99 a month
3 DVD out at-a-time : $15.99 a month
4 DVD out at-a-time : $21.99 a month
5 DVD out at-a-time : $27.99 a month
6 DVD out at-a-time : $32.99 a month
7 DVD out at-a-time : $37.99 a month
8 DVD out at-a-time : $43.99 a month

Unlimited Streaming + DVDs

Unlimited Streaming + 1 DVD out at-a-time : $15.98 a month
Unlimited Streaming + 2 DVD out at-a-time : $19.98 a month
Unlimited Streaming + 3 DVD out at-a-time : $23.98 a month
Unlimited Streaming + 4 DVD out at-a-time : $29.98 a month
Unlimited Streaming + 5 DVD out at-a-time : $35.98 a month
Unlimited Streaming + 6 DVD out at-a-time : $40.98 a month
Unlimited Streaming + 7 DVD out at-a-time : $45.98 a month
Unlimited Streaming + 8 DVD out at-a-time : $51.98 a month

Limited Plans

1 DVD out at-a-time (limit 2 rentals a month) + 2 hours of Streaming : $4.99 a month

Starz Play Only (no DVDs) Unlimited Streaming : $6.99 a month

What do you think of the new Netflix prices?

What do you think of the new Netflix prices? Do you like them or hate them? Will you change your Netflix membership or continue it the way it is? Do the above reasons, in your view, justify the price changes?

Share your opinions, reasons of why this is good or bad or any questions in the comments below. Thanks!

Google+ is here. And almost everyone who is using it says that it is out to destroy other social networks as we know it, specially Facebook.

Google+, if you don’t know about it yet, is the new social network by Google. It’s in an invite-only phase, like many of Google’s early projects. The only way to get in is by getting an invite. And you can get an invite from me.

Get Your Google+ Invite Now

Leave a comment below with your email address in the “Email” field.

I’ll send you an invite within an hour usually [might take more].

It’s as simple as that. No need to beg for it. No need to enter a contest to get your Google+ invite. No need to get the Social Improve updates for free, or add me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter [would be appreciated if you do!]. No need to refer other people to this post if you don’t want to.

And most important of all: No need to offer your cat or MySpace account as a sacrifice.

Want a Google+ invite? Comment away. Remember to be smart by leaving your comment in the “E-mail” field and not publicly in the “Comment” field.

Optional: If you want to give Social Improve something back in return, you can:

1. Add me on Facebook.
2. Follow Social Improve on Facebook.
3. Follow @BesZ on Twitter.
4. Subscribe to this site via e-mail or RSS
5. Use any of the social sharing buttons on top or below this post to share this article with others.

Remember, you’ll become my “friend” on my personal account on Google when I invite you to Google+. I’m only keeping that personal account around until Google rolls out Profiles and Plus to the paying Google Apps customers. When that happens, I’ll ditch my personal Google account and ask you to add me on my Google Apps account. You can of course, ignore me then and pretend you don’t know who I am. :p

By the way, the correct way of writing Google Plus is actually Google+ with that + sign in the end. The reason you’ll see the word “Plus” spelled out many times is because google can’t actually have a domain like +.google.com.

Enjoy!

Side-note: I’ve started the planning and writing of the books (digital and print) and some videos to share with everyone (at this site and at The Reasoner). Topics will include WordPress, blogging, websites, being successful online, and more! Details will come later this year hopefully. Otherwise, next year!

I know from personal experience that simply having thousands of Twitter followers is not enough to get those followers engaged in what you tweet. Tweeting the right content and at the right time helps tremendously in making sure your tweet gets acted upon. HootSuite is one of the hundreds of new social media tools that aim to help you do just that. HootSuite allows you to, as well as many other things, schedule your messages for the future. What HootSuite lacks, however, is the breakdown of how many of your Twitter followers are online at different times during the day. 14 Blocks fills that gap perfectly at the moment.

14 Blocks, owned by Felipe C. and run as part of the 63 Squares network, gives you a precise view of how many of your Twitter followers were online at different times during the past week.

14 Blocks - Scheduling Tweets and seeing numbers of users online

The great thing about 14 Blocks is that it gives you an almost up to the minute breakdown: 15 minute intervals is what you get. You can basically see how many of your Twitter followers were online every 15 minutes of the day for the last 2 weeks.

To help you decide if 14 Blocks is for you, here is a review of the different features 14 Blocks brings, and the elements it should work on more.

See how many of your Twitter Followers are Online Right Now

The entire power of 14 Blocks lies in its ability to let you know the number of your Twitter followers who were online at different times during the last 2 weeks. This is a tremendously vital piece of information for anyone who wants to analyze and improve the engagement rates from Twitter followers.

Sample of the number of followers online at different times for @BesZ

The best thing about 14 Blocks is shown in the above image. You can see the number of your Twitter followers online in the last week, and the number of Twitter followers online at this very moment. Imagine tweeting a very important message at 7:45pm according to the above chart, where it would get the least exposure immediately. Compare that to me tweeting that same important message at 7:00am or 10am, where according to 14 Blocks my message would get the most immediate exposure that day.

Schedule Tweets

14 Blocks also allows you to schedule future tweets, making it one of the several alternatives to scheduling services like HootSuite, Seesmic, SocialOomph and TweetDeck.

Where 14 Blocks scheduling becomes a bit more effective in theory is its combination with the data of when the next batch of highest number of your Twitter followers will be. The entire point of scheduling future tweets for many people and corporations is to make sure that different messages go out at different times for best results. 14 Blocks makes it super easy to schedule a tweet at any time you wish, or to automatically schedule it at the next best time when the most of your Twitter followers will be online.

Scheduling Tweets at the right time is a breeze in 14 Blocks

Mobile Version

14 Blocks service comes optimized for your phone or tablet. Simply fire up your mobile browser and the entire 14 Blocks interface will be available in a nice, clean format for your phone. Here is a snapshot of how the user interface looks on my HTC Evo 4G standard browser:

14 Blocks is optimized for mobile browsers

The mobile version offers all the features of 14 Blocks, including finding out the best times to post and scheduling tweets. This makes 14 Blocks a very good option if you want something that works while on the go and while being away from your main desktop or laptop.

14 Blocks Plans

14 Blocks Premium Plans

The free 14 Blocks account is forever and gives you the ability to see the latest number of Twitter followers online data refreshed every 2 weeks. What that means is 14 Blocks will analyze and update the “How many people are online at different times during the day” information every 2 weeks for you. 14 Blocks also offers a 14 day trial of the premium accounts. After the trial, you can choose one of the following 2 paid plans or keep your previous free account:

Support

There is Live Chat support during business hours. I have also noticed Live Chat support online randomly during non-business hours. Other forms of support are via 14 Block’s official @14Blocks Twitter account, via Felipe’s own Twitter account @twtfelipe, and via 14 Blocks e-mail.

Things 14 Blocks can Improve

While 14 Blocks worked nicely while I used it, there are a few things it can address to improve.

1. The data provided for calculating the number of online users is not 100% accurate.

   The time data of 14 Blocks is based on an algorithm that 14 Blocks thinks is relative. Thus, when 14 Blocks says that 160 people are online, it actually means that a total of 160 Twitter users were online on tools like the Web Twitter, Android Twitter, and several other clients, but not all, that 14 Blocks thinks are worth considering. The real number of users is far higher in almost every case. 14 Blocks also counts only users who are doing something like tweeting or replying; people who are online reading tweets do not count. Thus, you may be inclined to post at times when 14 Blocks says the highest number of your Twitter followers are online when in reality, most or many of such people may actually be tweeting themselves and not reading your tweets.

2. Only the Twitter social network is supported.

   In today’s day and age, I think the biggest limitation of a service like 14 Blocks is its social network integration. Enhancing it to include something like Facebook or Ping.fm would greatly add more value. This if of course for me a preference since I usually use Facebook almost as heavily as I do Twitter. Facebook integration would bring 14 Blocks in line with something like Social Oomph. Social Oomph, however, is overpriced compared to what the competition brings, and in terms of price alone, 14 Blocks has an advantage. Facebook API does allow you to see how many of your users are online, and integrating scheduling with that feature can make the service focus on both Facebook and Twitter users. That can also help it become a one stop shop for scheduling messages and finding out when your Twitter followers and Facebook friends are online the most. It is definitely something that none of the other major alternatives currently focus on.

   

   14 Blocks only supports Twitter

3. 14 Blocks @ mentions you every time there is an update on your account.

   This is more of a personal preference for me. I would rather have 14 Blocks DM [direct message] me instead of posting @ mentions with new time [latest data on how many users are online at what times] updates. It is more of a marketing route also because 14 Blocks needs to promote itself publicly too. These @ mentions are rare, though. They happen once weekly at max for each paid account and once every 2 weeks for free accounts.

4. PayPal subscription model is not synced according to the billing agreement and can end up with you losing money.

   I started my subscription on June 7th. I cancelled it on July 5th. Within hours, my 14 Blocks account was reverted back to the “free” version, even though the proper end date should have been July 7th. That is 2 days of paid service that I will not not be provided. I don’t need the service myself now, but for people who prefer a “per month” service instead of “per month and as long as your subscription is active” service, this may be an issue. What if you pay for a month and cancel on the 10th day – will you then lose 20 days of paid service? At this time, your 14 Blocks service plan gets cancelled the moment you cancel your PayPal subscription, instead of being cancelled when your current paid month finishes.



The basic settings area is too ... basic.

5. Design can be improved. Look at the above chart with the 15-minute interval info of how many of my Twitter followers are online. Looking at that chart regularly to try to figure out if some line is at 2:15 or 2:30 or something else can give you a headache and waste time. The feature is awesome; it needs to save time and be easily understood also.
6. The settings area is too basic.

   There are not enough options to configure in the settings area. For example, while you can use a Bit.ly shortener to your advantage, there is no way to integrate data from Bit.ly, which is available via an API, into your 14 Blocks account so that you can compare how many of your online Twitter followers are actually clicking. Thus, 14 Blocks feels very efficient at the basic tools it provides. For anything extra, you’ll have to keep using external services.

7. No Online Community.

   I know many people consider Twitter an online community, but a proper online community is something with a comments enabled area, a forums section or somewhere where users can interact with one another easily or even offer suggestions. 14 Blocks offers no such community at the moment. Having such an area would greatly help socialize the entire 14 Blocks experience because of interaction among 14 Blocks users who can help one another, ask questions or simply offer feedback, bug reports or suggestions.

What do You Think of 14 Blocks?

14 Blocks is probably the simplest and most effective way to figure out how many of your Twitter followers are online. At this time, 14 Blocks seems like the only main tool out there that very easily shows you how many of your Twitter followers were online throughout the last 2 weeks. In comparison, none of the other major services, including what I use to schedule our messages at Social Improve, HootSuite, offer any data that shows how many of my Twitter followers are online.

The free plan shows you the number of your Twitter followers who were online in the last 2 weeks, with such data updated every 14 days. The paid plan refreshes that data on a more frequent level, weekly to be precise. Scheduling tweets is also thrown in with the paid plans, which is an added bonus for anyone who wants to know exactly how many people will most probably end up reading your tweets.

What do you think of 14 Blocks? Do you use it or have plans to use it? What do you think of the pricing compared to the alternatives?

Share your opinions about 14 Blocks or any comments below. Thanks!

If you run WordPress on any of your sites, now’s the time to upgrade it. The much-anticipated 3.2 upgrade is here. WordPress 3.2 is here. Go ahead and download WordPress 3.2 now. You can also update your WordPress via your WP Dashboard. Go to Dashboard –> Updates for details. If you have a Multisite, simply upgrade WordPress from within the Dashboard area and you’ll be given an option to automatically upgrade all your sites also.

WordPress 3.2 also provides extensive speed upgrades. All of your user side and admin side pages are supposed to load faster than ever before. That also means you have to focus less on WordPress speeds and focus more on blogging.

Among many other things, WordPress 3.2 also sports an upgrade to the admin panel. WordPress Admin Panel now looks more polished than ever before.

Here is a snapshot on how it now looks on Social Improve:

WordPress 3.2 Admin Panel Updates - More Polished Interface

Here are some of the main highlights as mentioned by the WordPress 3.2 announcement post

What do you think of the new updates?

The number one issue you probably face on your WordPress blog is spam. Millions of spammers and spam bots go around millions of WordPress blogs daily to try to get their spam links placed on any possible page of your site. We at Social Improve get over 1,000 spammers daily who try very hard to leave a comment or register on our network of sites. This is in addition to the automated spam bots who get blocked by us automatically. When you want to be a successful blogger or want to have a happy blogging experience, the last thing you want to do is to deal with spammers as a full-time job. Spammers and spam comments not only waste your time, they also make your blog less secure, destroy your blog’s reputation and drive away search engines and real commentors. If you do not deal with spammers and spam comments, your blog will fail.

Do not worry, though. There is hope. You only need to take a few one-time steps to start addressing this issue on a massive level.

Your WordPress blog is a very customizable system that allows you to enhance it via plugins or direct changes. Spam elimination is one of the key focuses of many parts of WordPress, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of plugins and modifications online that you can use to protect yourself and your real commentors from spam comments. Recently I was asked by the famous Cecillia Tan on how to stop spammers from registering as users on her WordPress blog. I decided to write this guide to help you, her and others combat spam more effectively.

Any single implementation of any of these methods will start helping you combat spam immediately. Try not to overdo these anti-spam tactics, or you may end up driving away real non-spamming commentors or you may end up even slowing your blog down.

Anti Comment Spam Plugins

Even though Akismet is starting to get a bad rep on social networking sites like Twitter due to its new policy of forcing users to buy the paid plans, it is still highly recommended at combatting spam. Akismet comes by default with every official WordPress download at the moment, though that might change as more users online are noticing and complaining how such a commercial plugin is being sold via an open-source project called WordPress.

In addition to Akismet, there are many alternatives out there too. The following come highly recommended by WordPress users.

Spam Free WordPress plugin example

1. AVH First Defense Against Spam. This is for many people considered the best alternative to Akismet.
2. Spam Free WordPress
3. Block Spam by Math Reloaded
4. Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress. I hate Captchas, but if you are getting a lot of spam, this can help.
5. Comment E-Mail Verify. Very basic and very effective. Anytime someone leaves a comment on your blog, an email is sent to the email address of the commenter. The commenter then has to click the link in that e-mail to verify her/his e-mail address. If the link is not clicked, the comment will not get posted.

   One thing to watch out for, though: the amount of emails your blog will be sending out because of this may number in hundreds or thousands weekly. Many good WordPress hosts have no problem with such emails if they’re coupled with other anti-spam plugins to keep overall spam and emails down.

If we could recommend one plugin, it would actually be Akismet if it works out for you. Otherwise, any of the above will help. We at Social Improve hate Captchas, so we recommend you try that last.

Anti User Spam Plugins

Another way to combat spam is to either regulate the users registering on your site, or making all commentors register through a regulated interface first before being able to comment. All of these plugins help you eliminate spam user registrations on your site.

1. User Spam Removal
2. Pie Register
3. Register Plus Redux
4. WangGuard

Use any of these and test it out yourself. We suggest you start with Pie Register, then Register Plus Redux, then WangGuard and finally User Spam Removal to see which one you like.

Modify ["Hack"] WordPress and Theme files

In addition to plugins, you can also edit WordPress or WordPress theme files directly to help combat spam. Here are two popular edits many WordPress blog owners do to help curb spam. I recommend you first try plugins, and then focus on these edits if plugins are not working.

1. Stop comments which have no referrers.

   Almost all spam comment bots online have no referrers [usual browser info that tells websites where you came from], and thus this code will allow you to prohibit any such spam bots from being able to leave comments on your blog.

   Edit your .htaccess file and put the below code in it, changing the “socialimprove.com” link to your own.

   # Replace the socialimprove.com text below with your own domain
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post.php*
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*socialimprove.com.* [OR]
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
   RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]
   

   Thank you WpRecipes and Cats Who Code for this tip.

2. Disable HTML code in comments.

   You can also disable all html code in your comments, thus rendering most comment spam linking efforts of spammers useless.

   Once again, put the following code in your functions.php file:

   // This will occur when the comment is posted
   function plc_comment_post( $incoming_comment ) {
   
   	// convert everything in a comment to display literally
   	$incoming_comment['comment_content'] = htmlspecialchars($incoming_comment['comment_content']);
   
   	// the one exception is single quotes, which cannot be #039; because WordPress marks it as spam
   	$incoming_comment['comment_content'] = str_replace( "'", ''', $incoming_comment['comment_content'] );
   
   	return( $incoming_comment );
   }
   
   // This will occur before a comment is displayed
   function plc_comment_display( $comment_to_display ) {
   
   	// Put the single quotes back in
   	$comment_to_display = str_replace( ''', "'", $comment_to_display );
   
   	return $comment_to_display;
   }
   
   add_filter( 'preprocess_comment', 'plc_comment_post', '', 1);
   add_filter( 'comment_text', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1);
   add_filter( 'comment_text_rss', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1);
   add_filter( 'comment_excerpt', 'plc_comment_display', '', 1);
   

   Thanks to I Talk Less for the code.

Again, try to use plugins first or go through the WordPress Anti-Spam Settings explained below first, and then go through any direct file edits mentioned above.

Tweak basic WordPress Anti-Spam Settings

WordPress itself comes with some basic, yet extremely effective, comment moderation settings. These range from not allowing comments on older posts to moderating any comments with any number of links and more.

WordPress Discussion Settings help moderate spam.

1. Require commentors to register and login before commenting.

   This results in commentors having to register first to leave any comment. We at Social Improve do not follow this rule ourselves, as we also do not like registering on other sites just to comment. However, a registration process greatly reduces the number of spam commentors you would otherwise get. Such a rule will stop many commentors from wanting to leave any comment.

   However, this can also lead to another problem: an increase in the number of registered spam accounts on your WordPress blog. Such an issue can be solved using any of the “Anti User Spam Plugins” mentioned above.

2. Close comments on older posts.

   Go into your Settings –> Discussion area to configure this. We don’t recommend it, though. Thanks to Make Tech Easier for reminding us again for this very simple tip. We do not recommend this, though, as your older blog posts may also attract comments. We get many comments on our older articles every day.

3. Allow comments only from previously approved commentors.

   This simply means that anyone who is leaving a comment for the first time will get their comment moderated, and that anyone who has left a comment before that you approved will have their comment immediately approved.

   Go into your Settings –> Discussion area to configure this. We do recommend this. It means more moderation work, though that will also result in more comments being tagged by you as spam, blacklisted or approved. That also helps your spam and blacklist filter to help you save time in the future.

4. Moderate comments with any links in the comment body.

   This is simple. It simply moderates any comments which has any kind of link in it. Again in the Settings –> Discussion area, you can moderate any comment which has any kind of link. These have usually been the most common types of spam. This will result in any comment with any kind of link, even from approved members, to be held in moderation for spam. We recommend this.

5. Blacklist [ban] words, IP addresses, email addresses and website links.

   The same Settings –> Discussion area also has the “Blacklist” section. Put any word, number or link in there, and WordPress will automatically prohibit any comment from commenting when the comment has any of the mentioned words in numbers in anything related to their message.

How Do You Combat WordPress Comment Spam?

44 Spam comments while writing this last paragraph

Of course, we got 44 new spam comments while writing this last paragraph alone. Great thing our spam filters and edits are working perfectly.

How do you deal with spam on your WordPress blog? Which plugins or methods do you recommend? What has worked or not worked for you so far?

Share your thoughts, tips or any questions in the comments below. Thanks!

What happens when the most basic thing you do daily, a Google search, results in a bias that is hard to spot but easy to digest? You get evidence that cultural influences are at work. Surprisingly, such search results also indirectly influence you into thinking that something should be thought of in a certain manner.

Things you search for on Google are not all anonymous and directly searched for. In fact, many times things you search for are analyzed into some other kind of “meaningful” data that Google thinks may benefit you. However, as I found out, it seems this “meaningful” data can be biased because of being based on generally accepted notions of what our society likes and dislikes.

Let us take the example of ending a life to see what Google Search may actually be thinking. There are two kinds of lives you can end: other lives, and your own. Let us see what Google thinks when you do a search on the notion of either wanting to kill your own self or someone else.

Google feels all right when you want to kill others…

You want to kill others? That’s ok, Google will give you the answers clearly without any hesitation. It’s an open web after all.

Google is comfortable with I want to kill others search query

Seems good – Google is focusing on giving you the results without actually telling you to not be a murderer. That’s awesome! Google is not assuming you are bad. You just want results on the topic.

But Google starts caring when you want to kill yourself!

What happens when you search for something that contains the notion that you want to kill your own self? Google should treat it the same way as killing others in terms of showing the most relevant results, right?

Google starts advising when you talk about killing yourself

Wait, what? All of a sudden, Google assumes you need help and provides the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as a direct search result output. Before, Google did not assume that you wanted to kill others or didn’t care. But now, Google thinks you’ll kill yourself and wants to be an intervening party? Why would Google oppose suicide but not say anything when the topic revolves around killing others? There’s a lifeline to call when one wants to kill him/herself, but no lifeline when one wants to kill others?

Google feels calm when you want to murder innocent people…

The strangeness does not stop there though. Google Search algorithms really do not care whether you want to harm or kill other living beings. It is currently setup to only care if you want to kill yourself.

So I decided to explicitly say “murder innocent people” to see if that made Google start caring by showing me some info on how to seek any kind of help or advice so that one does not want to murder innocent people.

Does Google Search care if you want to murder innocent people? No.

Simply interesting. There is no organization out there that advises and helps people not have murderous thoughts? Google still doesn’t think it can provide any “meaningful” data for when you search for the idea of murdering innocent people, like it did in the case of “I want to kill myself.”

And Google keeps feeling normal when you want to kill kittens…

Are kittens as important as human beings? I think so. However, search for “I want to kill cats” or “I want to kill kittens” on Google, and you’ll have Google give you direct results, without any advice.

Wanna kill cats? Google Search doesn't care.

What’s going on? PETA is there, why not link to PETA and give their hotline number 757-622-PETA? No.

But Google is worried when you want to commit suicide!

But search for “I want to commit suicide” instead of “I want to kill myself”, and Google starts feeling the need to give you advice again.

Google wants to save lives only if it's by preventing suicides

If only the National Suicide Hotline was known to pay Google to put its number out there. It’s not, though. Google is doing this on its own.

Societal expectations influence Google Search strongly

These results show one thing clearly. No matter how open the online world may be or may claim to be, at least some things online are direct results of what the society offline thinks are good and bad. Society thinks suicide is worse than killing others for various reasons, and Google Search seems to be mimicking that thought in their search results. In the end, when you see the search results, you are basically being told by Google that thinking about suicide is bad, but murdering others is something you have to figure out on your own. It seems Google has focused on the word “suicide” and its variations only because of the popularity of the National Suicide Hotline.

In my view, it should be the opposite: if Google has to intervene, it should be when you’re searching for search terms related to killing others, and not yourself. It would be best if Google did not intervene at all, but I guess intervening is part of Google’s educational steps to teach others or to be part of society and daily lives. Interestingly enough, such an educational step seems to be a biased view, intentional or unintentional, on what Google thinks you should care about more. It’s a good step by Google I guess, but a very biased, unfinished step. Imagine how many lives Google would be saving if it actually provided similar “meaningful” data to people who are online searching for reasons and ways to kill others.

What is your view on this?

What is your view on this? Do you think searches for killing others also deserve more help and interference from Google? Or do you think Google is doing all that it should by focusing only on suicidal queries? Do you think the openness of the web means that search engines give direct answers without any bias, or that they treat all subjects of the same concept [in this example, taking a life prematurely] equally instead of trying to appeal to the popular culture?

Share your comments, opinions, questions or any search examples in the comments below. Thanks!

We all know the ongoing debates about how so many people think Facebook is better than MySpace. People have compared Facebook and MySpace endlessly.

Social Improve wants to ask the real unique question never asked before: Are MySpace users more mature than Twitter users, or vice versa?

Many people automatically assume that the overall population thinks MySpace user base is not mature compared to other social networks. But is that true in reality? Do you think MySpace users are less mature than Twitter users? Or do you think Twitter users as of this year are less mature than MySpace users?

To balance the scales a little bit into making you realize that MySpace isn’t the only place with immature users, consider the 10 Annoying Twitter User Types and also the Belieber trend:

Justin Bieber Beliebers are on Twitter - Are They Immature?

Poll – MySpace user OR Twitter user – Who is more mature?

So who do you think is more mature? Your answers pick the winner.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Who Do You Think is Maturer?

Do you think MySpace users are more mature because of being around more? Do you think Twitter users are more mature because of the 140 character limit? Or is there any other reason you think that defines your answer?

Vote above, and share your comments or opinions in the comments below. Thanks!

Everyone you know probably knows about Twitter. They may not understand what Twitter is, but almost everyone online and almost everyone offline around us knows it’s there. It’s the place to talk about anything in less than 140 characters. It’s the place to let everyone else know what you have to say or offer. With the rise in popularity, Twitter has also become the place for a new breed of annoying online users who do nothing but annoy others on Twitter, intentionally or unintentionally.

I get spammed on my @BesZ twitter account almost every 10 minutes or so, and most probably you do too. In addition to spam, people act strangely on Twitter without actually thinking about what they’re doing. Since Twitter focuses and thrives on user interaction, the more annoying someone is, the more affected you can be. It can be very easy to ignore someone who is annoying. It becomes harder, however, to ignore millions of annoying Twitter users who keep doing annoying things or keep acting in an annoying manner without getting anything productive done for themselves, and without providing anything of value to others.

These annoying users may not have the intention of annoying others, but their actions and tweets have resulted in you, me or someone else feeling somewhat annoyed at least everyday. They post spam links, they Retweet [RT] others excessively without having any original tweets, and they also make sure they ignore the step of trying to learn what Twitter is all about or how to use it more efficiently while complaining about Twitter at the same time.

These and more are all annoying types of Tweeters.

Fire up your tweets and pause your birds for a few moments. Here are the 10 most annoying types of Twitter users going around annoying others on Twitter today. See if you’re one of them, or if you know someone who is.

10 Annoying Types of Twitter Users

1. Sending DM’s with spam links.
   

   One type of annoying Twitter users spam dm'ing @BesZ

   This is one of the most common types of annoying Twitter users out there. Such tweeters will direct message [DM] spam you with links that have nothing to do with you or anything mentioned in the DM itself. This is the exact same as emailing someone with a link saying “Hey click this please!”

   The good thing about Twitter is that your “Messages” area is hidden away when you log onto Twitter. So such spam is hidden until you actually go looking for it. That’s also when you decide to either unfollow or block such annoying tweeters.

2. You get paranoid and offended when someone you don’t know replies or @’s to you on Twitter.

   You would be surprised at the number of people who get offended if you answer them or reply to any of their tweets online for the first time. Such people jump onto Twitter, mainly from MySpace and other networks, without realizing how Twitter works. They will actually get paranoid and ask if you know them. The entire point of Twitter, as opposed to Facebook or MySpace, is to interact with everyone you come across if you wish. If your profile is not set to private, the Twitter world will jump right in. If you are always acting rude and paranoid to people who contact you for the first time on Twitter, you are simply annoying. Maybe you should not delete your MySpace profile just yet.

3. Writing longer than 140 characters and linking to deckly or elsewhere for more.
   

   Tweeting longer than 140 characters? Blog and link to your blog instead.

   Twitter is about your 140 character messages. There is no science or philosophy behind why such a thing is better than something like, say, Facebook. Twitter simply found a niche, and is sticking to that niche nicely. If your message is longer than 140 characters, start a blog and link to it. Having something like Deck.ly shorten your 200 character tweets is annoying. Millions of annoying Twitter users are wasting everyone’s time by resorting to Deck.ly and other services every week.

   Why? Because users see your 120 or so characters on Twitter, click your Deck.ly or other “expansion” link to read more, and realize that they clicked and visited a new page just to read an extra 50 or so words. Whenever you make someone visit a new page to have them read your short message, just because you could not write within 140 characters, you are annoying. And you are annoying others by wasting their time and expectations. Start a blog instead. Having deck.ly serve as an expansion to your tweets that no one can understand without visiting deck.ly defeats the purpose of having a Twitter account.

4. Constantly RT’ing just for the sake of Retweeting others.

   This is one of the most brilliant class of Twitter users. Because they have found a niche among the annoying Twitter user category. These tweeters will RT anything they come across. Their daily life focuses on how to RT other tweets as fast as possible while adding as little as possible on their own to the Twitter world. They are annoying because all they do is RT, even if it’s an RT of another RT that RT’s another RT. It’s annoying because such users destroy the purpose of RT. I actually try to avoid many RT’s now, knowing full well they’re being retweeted without any thought.

   The entire purpose of an RT, or a retweet, is to RT something that you yourself would have tweeted too if you had the chance. Annoying Twitter users use RT as their main form of expression, without tweeting much or at all on their own.

5. MLM and Spam Link Tweets and replies only.
   

   Constantly posting MLM spam links makes you an annoying spammer and an annoying tweeter.

   Aaah yes. MLM and Spam. Two words meaning the same exact thing for many. Everyone knows about email spam. What everyone does not know is that spammers have embraced the new Twitter world will full force. Twitter is doing its part daily to delete and eliminate spamming tweets and spammy accounts. Spammers keep on flocking to Twitter in big numbers every minute of the day, though.

   Spammers have found the perfect way to get a lot of followers: they follow people who automatically follow them back. And with the increase in followers, they keep on posting the same link repeatedly.

   The mentality is that the more you post, the more chances there are of a link being clicked. So these annoying Twitter users keep posting the same link over and over again. And again. And again.

6. Posting quotes as an obsession or to appear less spammy.

   This is a new quieter trend I’ve noticed happening on an increasing scale across the Twitterverse since last year that’s surprisingly not yet noticed directly by more tweeters. This class of annoying Tweeters keep tweeting their links all the time, and in between, they’ll post a few quotes without any links in order to appear normal and less spammy. This helps them avoid Twitter spam filters, and it also creates the fake illusion that the tweeter produces quality content, mixed with links.

   

   Chris Voss - quote spamming to hide link spamming.

   Chris Voss and Chris Voss Show twitter accounts, both by Chriss Voss, are examples of this. I give his example for one reason only: the video content on Chris’s website is awesome and makes a lot of sense. However, I’ve no idea why he resorts to this tactic of always posting links to his site or affiliate links every hour of the day, throwing in a quote or two every now and then to appear less spammy. When you actually read the tweets, it becomes annoying.

   The content on his site is great and very logical, but his online social accounts are 99.99% of the time repeated links to his new and old articles, mixed with quotes from others to appear less spammy to spam filters. I still follow Chris Voss, btw. I’ve learnt to ignore 99.99% of his tweets and annihilate the quotes in my mind, though.

7. “Get More Followers” tweeters – all the time or regularly.

   Want to know how some tweeters have so many followers? They follow users who only follow back. Anytime you see any user with thousands of followers and the same or more amount of following, such a user is just following people who follow back. That tweeter has not achieved such a following because of being good. They become even more annoying because of repeatedly telling others how to “get more followers.”

   

   @WebDesignDev followed 34k+ people in order to get 31k+ followers

   @WebDesignDev is an example of this. They regularly tweet on how you can get more followers by following their links.

   The funny truth is, they got so many followers because they followed the exact same or more number of Twitter accounts which follow you back. When you follow someone on Twitter who automatically follows you back, you get 1 more follower in return. It’s absolutely no achievement to get even hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter if all of them are following you only because you followed them first. You will notice this annoying spamming tweet from thousands of tweeters every minute of the day on Twitter.

8. Posting your online game achievements, like Mafia Wars or Zombies or others.

   These are just plain waste of time for everyone. Social games have continued to prove while the games work and make money on an individual level, the social interaction of such games has yet to maturely work in a fashion where the trend doesn’t die off, in terms of working effectively, within a few months. They surely build up excitement, but then majority of people move on, and the remaining people keep spamming their achievements. This mainly happens because the game services themselves want you to tweet about it.

   “The more tweets you get, the more users you’ll get” is the hopeful mentality of these game services, without focusing on the quality of the tweets. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for users, it only serves as being annoying and creating a bad brand image.

9. Tweets, specially Justin Bieber fans, who keep tweeting “Please Follow Me!” or “Plz Like my FB Page so I can get 25 users!“

   If you do not know how Twitter and Justin Bieber are related, you are lucky. The twitter world’s biggest spam and quality problem at the moment seems to be the millions of kids, mainly from Europe and North America, who are joining Twitter just to tell others that they are Twitter fans. And they tweet the same kinds of messages constantly, begging others to follow them. Whether or not such users are fans of Justin Bieber, begging others to follow you on Twitter shows everything else that you are on Twitter not to tweet but to feel more important.

   And on Twitter, users acting like stereotypical MySpace users are loathed and considered annoying. And so is Justin Bieber.

10. Tweeting “I don’t get this twitter shit” constantly.
    

    Complaining constantly about not understanding twitter makes you an annoying Tweeter

    For some reason, these users always remind me of MySpace. There is a growing number of Twitter users, mostly new, who don’t understand what Twitter is about. That’s fine, because most of the people don’t. Not even Twitter completely knows what Twitter is doing right to get followers, otherwise you would be seeing the company making billions every year. What is happening though, in case of such annoying tweeters, is that they keep complaining about how they don’t understand twitter, without ever asking for help.

    It’s perfectly all right to not understand Twitter and to tweet about it. It’s annoying to constantly complain about not understanding without actually trying to understand. If you don’t get something, ask. Simply tweeting again and again that you don’t get Twitter will not solve anything. It will simply make others go “I don’t get your annoying tweets!“

Are You an Annoying Tweeter? Know Any Other Annoying Tweeter Types?

In the end, something annoying for one person may be a blessing for someone else. What do you think of the above list? Do you think all of the above Twitter user types are annoying? Which other types of Twitter users annoy you?

As expected, I got a spammy mention with a spam FOREX link by @ann_vw while I was writing this post:

Spammed by annoying Twitter users even while I write about the Annoying Twitter Users

Share your thoughts, favorite tweets, annoying twitter users or any questions in the comments below. Thanks!

Customers still like getting support over the phone. Even for services entirely online, many people prefer hearing a human voice when getting help instead of staring at a website. A human voice and direct human interaction provides the comfort that a resolution will most probably be met by the service representative.

In contrast, on any website, you are usually expected to find help yourself and apply the fix yourself too. Even if your online service is top notch and your phone support is not good, your users will most likely rate you based on the quality of your phone support.

So what is the 1 simple step to improve customer experience in any phone support?

Let your website verify the user so that there’s no need to do that over the phone.

Phone Support

Example: Netflix does this perfectly

If you ever have a problem with Netflix, try calling them. I had an issue with Netflix today and could not find any info in their help files. So I went to the Netflix Contact Us page to find out the phone number to call. Surprisingly, when you click the “Call Customer Support” link, Netflix gives you the phone number and a randomly generated service code number.

Netflix Phone Code. Take a look at the full Netflix Phone service code page.

There will be no need to verify your account. The amount of time it took for me to get to that service code entry prompt to actually having a person talk to me was less than 20 seconds. When the Netflix customer support lady took my call, she knew exactly who I was. There was no need to verify anything. She answered my questions instantly, took care of me and I was off the phone. The entire phone call lasted less than 2 minutes.

Such a simple service code concept saves a great amount of time and stress you go through trying to verify who you are when all you want is help with something simple. Netflix phone support works, because it has been made so simple via the website service code area.

What is Your View on Phone Support Verification?

Netflix phone support is a fine example of one single step you can take to greatly improve the quality of the experience a customer goes through via the phone with you. That simple step simply focuses on eliminating the need to waste the customer’s time more than necessary. Your website already knows a user who is logged into their account is real. Your phone support simply goes along with it.

What is your view on following this single step to improving customer experience over the phone?

Share your thoughts, stories or any questions regarding this in the comments below. Thanks.