Spike Lee At The 5th Edition Of Brooklyn Blogfest 2010

What Blogs and Brooklyn have in common? Apparently they really love each other! The 5th Annual Edition of Brooklyn Blogfest 2010 was a celebration of Brooklyn’s attitude and lifestyle, expressed trough so many blogs written on or about this New York City borough.

Seems to be a fact that Brooklyn holds the biggest amount of blogs and bloggers, what makes it a very special place in the world for creativity and specially for the ones interested in expressing their own ideas to be heard by the world. That is why “Create. Inspire. Blog” was the theme of the party! The former Brooklyn habitant Spike Lee showed up for a special speech and for a session of questions and answers with the audience. 

Rules and Regulations about paid reviews from the Federal Trade Commission

Do you think is okay to pay for bloggers to write blog posts about your products? What do you think of bloggers who make money that way? Do you believe should have some rules or regulation about it?

On Bloggers School second radio of this season we will be talking to Richard Cleland representing the Bureau of Consumer Protection from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is going to talk about rules and regulations when it comes to paid product and service reviews made by bloggers.

We are also expecting Shannelle Armstrong, from the Sears Holding Corporation to share her thoughts about reviews made by kids.

The call in number to the show is (347) 215-7878.

John Ciampa moderates eComXpo panel “Dirty Little Secrets: Taking The Lid Off Affiliate Marketing And Assessing What Creates Value”

The power of blogs ranking better than regular sites in search engine results made a bunch of fake blogs come out as pages called Flogs, a 3 million dollars a month industry that’s creating a stir through fake blogs.

The content publish on a lot of those site is copyrighted content from other websites with a ads and links to merchants products and services to generate money. What they are trying to do is push themselves up in the search engine on other people’s content and keywords.

Social Media is all about transparency, credibility and originality. Using fake content or fake bloggers to talk about you product and services might work out really well at first for traffic proposes. but at the end of the day the risk of being reported and having your site banned from search engine will probably wont be worth it. Besides that, the damage you can generate for your brand reputation is probably irreversible.

Another problem caused by people just copying and pasting others people content is generating duplicate content, what can make your blog or site to be penalized by Google. Read the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog to understand more about how to deal with duplicate content or how to report Google about people using your content.

To learn more about how far black hat affiliate marketers go to push the envelope on a Google controlled system you must register to the next eComXpo and join the panel “Dirty Little Secrets: Taking The Lid Off Affiliate Marketing And Assessing What Creates Value”.

Check out a few topic that are going to be discussed on July 8th, at 4:20pm, which will be moderated by John A Ciampa, from Bloggers School:

• How can the affiliate industry help search engines to get flogs knocked down and prevent content duplication?
• Will actions of the FTC deter black hatters from engaging in unethical practices?
• Assess the impact of black hat practices on affiliate marketing in a time when affiliate marketing is the most cost effective and efficient marketing channel companies can use
• Devise a breakthrough marketing program by taking the creativity of black hat and applying it to marketing and creating value

Are part of the discussion panel:

• Jay Weintraub, CEO, LeadsCon
• John Reel, Internet Entrepreneur & Developer, www.GoTryThis.com
• Steven Richter, President, Media Breakaway
• Todd Malicoat, SEO & Social Media Expert, Stuntdubl.com

Bloggers School Blogging & Social Media For Business Workshop

Finally we are doing our first workshop June 25th in Astoria/LIC NYC 6:00 PM -10:00 PM EST come join us to learn how to use Social media tools better. Our vision for these workshops are to pass on our knowledge about the use of free internet tools to gives you the freedom to help your business grow a loyal community around it. To register for the Bloggers School live group workshop follow this link 99.00 in advance 125.00 at the door. You can pay by pay pal or credit card.

Do not miss this event come join us for an evening of networking, learning and fun.

We will be covering the following subjects this event will be fun with lot’s of giveaways from Sponsors.

1) Set up and improve your word press blog with widgets of all types.

2) Content Creation : How to find good content to add to your blog.

3) Twitter: How to use it like an ear to the tracks

4) Tracking your efforts online using free tracking tools.

6) Using small video cameras like the Flip to become your own Citizen journalist or content creation king

7) Digital Online Copyright Law

Ashton Kutcher becomes the “First Millionaire” on Twitter and Domino’s Pizza loses millions in brand equity

Ashton Kutcher was the first person to reach 1 million followers on Twitter. He broke followers record and made history becoming first person to achieve this goal.

Yesterday was actually a big day for a lot of people to understand (or not) what is going on nowadays. Demi Moore’s husband showcased his victory on live on Ustream and post a video on YouTube, where he says he can’t follow himself, he is following us. Was funny to Kutcher saying that while he was reading a script. Even more when you realize that from more than 1,122,000 followers, he only follows 80 back. Is he really following us? Does he really care about the conversation? Or he is just surrounded by a very competent team?

Below, in this Ashton Kutcher’s video, you can see why the discussion just got started.

On the other hand, a multi million dollars brand lost equity by the use of New Media. We learned about the Domino’s Pizza incident from Gary Vaynerchuk’s video blog. Finally happened: somebody from inside a big corporation made a nasty video to and really committed the image of the brand.

Two employees appear in the video below sneezing over the food and putting pieces inside the nose. What to think after this? For the good and for the bad, everybody is using Social Media for branding their reputation.

From fast food workers to celebrities, be aware: the revolution is here.

Tips for branding your business, products and services online using Social Media

Nowadays, with such demanding consumers, when you think about starting a business you must think about branding it as well. But what is branding?

Branding is creating a whole experience and a strong idea around your products or services. The colors, the logo, the bags, the employees  uniforms, the stores: everything is part of what you are selling. Back in the days, a few visionaries started to create and identity to their companies, and that is what makes a Mc Donald’s burger different than any other burger in the world. Whether you like the Mc Donald’s burgers or not, you still are well familiar with their brand and you know it is a single experience.

We asked this question to Duncan Alney, at the last edition of the Search Engine Strategies New York 2009. In the video below he is giving a couple advices about how-to brand using Social Media and Web 2.0.

Branding using Social Media is something that everybody is talking about. New Media such as Blogs, Social Networks, Bookmarks, Podcasting, Video and Photo Sharing made branding something much more cheaper than it use to be. The fact of being more accessible doesn’t mean it is low quality or unprofessional. You can actually find and reach possible costumer in a more precise way, according to what they are looking for. You are also able to listen better and find a bigger number of small audiences that are looking for you and what your company has to offer.

Here are a few tips about how you can use Social Media tools and websites to promote your business online:

1. Create accounts in Social Networks and sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious and Digg. Use always the same user name and share your logo with the world. The more complete your profiles are the better, so everybody can learn more about your business. Don’t forget to manage your account often and interact to people related to your interests;
2. Take pictures and make movies about your business, services, products, employees, stores, costumer service, EVERYTHING, and upload them to your page on you YouTube or any other site where you can share videos and photos. You will be actually creating commercials about your brand and developing a Marketing campaigns online;
3. Create a RSS (Real Simple Sindication) feed and incentive your visitors to subscribe to your content. This way they will receive your content in their reader everytime you uptade your blog. It is much nicer way than send invasive e-mails everytime you post, and it’s also a good termomether to know how much people are wiling to commit to your company;
4. Visit, read and comment in sites related to your business blog. That is a good way to understand your marketing, know about what costumers are looking for and also become part of the community. You can also create quality links posting discussions, joining forums and getting envolved in the conversation;
5. Be a real person! When it comes to Social Media, it’s not about creating a bunch of accounts and being on the top of all new tools or techologies. It’s about the way you use all those tools to build your brand reputation. If in the past companies had to spend millons of dollars in Marketing to actually hide and fake their weeknesses, the Marketing of the future is all about truthfully, autenticy and exposing. Puting your brand into Social Media is also a good way to deal with crisis reputation and problems with your services. On the other hand, if you don’t CARE about people or just can’t see your business as part of a context, probably Social Media is not a good place for you!