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Social bookmarking has been a great tool for webmasters and bloggers to push their content to the masses. There are sites that obviously weigh in on their power to help attract traffic while others are struggling. Social network sites in a way have contributed to social bookmarking in a way as live streams like Twitter are crawled and documented by Google. However, they are not “social bookmark” sites.

Though you may be apt to join larger communities, it may suit your interest if you find smaller social bookmark communities that have a concentrated interest in your niche. For example, WPVote is specifically gear toward people who talk about anything WordPress related. Top Roundups is focused on articles that have lists (roundup articles.) Blogrity is very new and in beta mode, but hopes to use a wide topic range, but it is a social bookmark site dedicated to bloggers.

Of course, you will want to join Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and many others that are large and have been around for years. However, do not cut yourself short.

The great things are that these social bookmark sites are an asset for bloggers and webmasters because it allows people to find your article in a community setting. You are allowing them to either discuss your article on the social bookmark site or within your site, which both attract traffic. Of course, just bookmarking your links will not make your site succeed alone. If you are a person that is writing to connect with others, you will have to reach out and talk with your readers. In return, this will build a relationship that may keep them coming back to view what you have to say.

Do you use social bookmarking sites? If so, has it helped improve your site? What social bookmark sites do you recommend people using?

I had been noticing some of the things streaming around twitter involving suing for tweeting something and such. In fact Chris Voss (on Twitter) has a video blog called Rude Tweets or Blogging Can Get You Sued – Video. The New York Times covered the fact that Courtney Love had been sued for saying defamatory things a designer in their article Short Outbursts on Twitter? #Big Problem.

I am not entirely into agreeance with Chris on those, but even the ‘golden rule’ is not used of day by day. Some instances are where the social network user or blogger may say something that is true. In the case that what is said is not libelous or defamatory toward a company, individual or brand, you are within your rights to say what you like.

Forgive me on this, but I will give an example. Calling someone a petty bitch is not libelous. It is a matter of opinion. However, if you say that someone is a liar, like the Courtney Love Twitter debacle, you could face serious backlash: being sued, fired, blacklisted from a career, and overall – damage your reputation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a civil liberties group that covers the internet users rights. This includes bloggers. Their section on Bloggers Rights is indepth and insightful. In fact the EFF covers Bloggers Rights well in their article How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) which talk about scenarios for certain bloggers whether they should or should not blog.

So, although you should really not say anything negative about anyone, you really should think about how it is said. If it is not true – do not write it or you could risk your credibility as a respected blogger.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for blogging?

On October 5, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials – Changes Affect Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers, Celebrity Endorsements. Of course, this issue is debatable on the fact that at this moment it has never been officially said that the Internet was medium, as perceived by WebProNews covers in their article Potential FTC Fines Raise Big Blogging Questions.

This issue does crack down on people who blog for pay, or pay to post/ pay to review. And it is right to do so as blogging is steadily being recognized as a medium as news stations are even turning to interviewing prominent bloggers for their experience on certain topics. This is not a single case deal as these are widely seen all over, even in my area – the St. Louis metro east (Southern Illinois.) Bloggers are influencing people with their posts. Some choose to endorse products and that can run into problems if a company has a product that is not up to par as what the blogger said.

With this policy, the company must provide adequate instructions to bloggers to post disclosures making their readers aware that they will write product reviews for monetary gain. This includes places like Pay Per Post and Social Spark, who run between the companies to get bloggers to write about them. This will deter companies with less than honest reputation to avoid seeking bloggers to endorse without a disclosure. By the way, Pay Per Post and Social Spark, who are properties of Izea require site wide disclosures and/or individual post disclosures. You can get a site wide disclosure with DisclosurePolicy.org for free, or create your own. In doing so will establish a more honest relationship with your readers.

As for individuals, it is important to put a notation of some type that the post is either a paid review, endorsement, or something similar. It would be recommended to do this with past posts even if the policy is not to go into effect until December 1, 2009. Violation of this policy could cost a blogger $11,000. Of course, this extends to even advertising in your social networking streams like Twitter and Facebook, but I decided to focus on the blogging aspect in this article.

What do you think of FTC’s policy change? Do you do paid to post? Do you have a disclosure policy for your blog?

Andy Peatling, announced BuddyPress 1.1 Released on September 30, 2009. There were a few updated to the core and now the social network platform offers:

• One click internal bbPress forum integration
• global forum directory
• Easier theme integration
• More freedom for administrators to control their site
• Allow plug developers to hook their BuddyPress installation into outside web services
• Group API to extend features.

as well as a few more attributes. The one-click install for the bbPress integration is something that I have particularly looking forward too as it is just less hassle than installing the files and then the plugin to fit it into the site. I have been working on my own installation for my class reunion site so we have a central place to talk, rather than use Facebook to sort through all the messages. Although I can say the class reunion was a success in September 2009, many people were informed last minute even though they were online to find out about the event.

Also, loading new themes had been quite the struggle for me in the past. In fact, even based on the FAQs and reading the forums on BuddyPress, I still had to wing a few things to get my theme working correctly, so this is a true relief.

I still wonder when BuddyPress might become available for a one-click install for webhosts to offer their clients (example: cPanel’s Fantastico Deluxe.)

Have you tried out BuddyPress? What do you think?

As a few know (and for those who do not, now you do know), I intern for the wiki named FanHistory.com. Unfortunately in the past they were banned from Digg because of apparent spamming, and partially past wankage (wank), this is a case based on a past grudge. This was done originally as one of those ‘I am excited to have a site, but not exactly aware of how to properly promote my content.’

However, after some time, I thought that I would contact Digg and ask them to reconsider their stance, since I could not even bookmark some of FanHistory’s blog entries. Although it seemed I received a human response about reconsidering, I am willing to bet that no matter even if FanHistory becomes a very informational resource (which it has become to an extent. Example: There was an article called Trending Topics: 5 Ways Companies Used News Trends for Business Success on Mashable not long ago), that Digg may have been just have looked, replied, and then deleted.

In fact, this is the reply I got (and Digg was great at replying promptly, just so you know):

Does Digg differentiate between spam and spamming?

Spam is very subjective. Many times, the spammer honestly doesn’t think they are spammers, so we generally leave that up to the Digg community to decide with the report/bury feature. We may delete users who blatantly and consistently submit obvious spam. Additionally, comment spam is against our TOS and will result in an account ban or deletion, depending on the severity. Submission spamming is different because it may be quality content but the submitter is “spamming” every story from their blog/site. While we welcome users to submit their own content, overdoing it often incites the users to mark the user as a spammer, the site as a spam site, and otherwise decent content as blogspam. We recommend considering this before you engage in this activity. Remember, if domains are consistently buried and reported as spam, the site may be
banned.

Because unblocking your domain would not be in line with the best interests of the larger Digg community, we cannot reverse this decision. But we’ll take your feedback into consideration.

So basically Digg even says that submitting your own blog content to Digg on your own account can be considered blog spam by them. Now, I can see spamming off topic material that constantly asks people to purchase something is definitely spam. However, good articles… what is the point if you cannot get your own content out there in the community. Also, you cannot like your own posts and submit them?

So I guess I should come to a point about this by now. Be careful about what and how you bookmark your articles on any social bookmark site. When you sign up, read the site’s terms of service. Even if you think it is dumb, it could save you a headache later on. Ignorance may not save you from an being unbanned later down the road because the site rules are available and easily accessible. In fact, these services do not try to hide them because if they did, it could look bad.

Should social bookmarking places like Digg look further into what classifies as blog spam? What do you think?

(Note: This is not an attack on Digg. I like their services, but I think more should be done in the area of classifying spam.)

People preach password protection by citing online resources to either signup or download. Personally, I would stay away from them. A lot of these programs and places require that you put in answers to personal security questions, your birthday, and more. However, as we have seen from time to time, there has been hackings of the best internet companies out there, including the Twitter hacking a couple months ago that TechCrunch revealed to the world.

You should not rely on these services to do this for you, even if it is a matter of convenience. Yes, it is great, but are you willing to still risk your information being blown to bit. Even people are being hacked by their own family and friends. Now, this post is not to make you leery of your own family and friends, but to share with you that it is a possibility as it has happened. Some people literally live online and they have signed up to dozens of different sites: social networking, gaming, shopping, banking, etc. I hear a lot of people every day talking about losing passwords or getting hacked and I guess today I finally decided that it was time to address the matter. Here are some ways to help:

1. Keep a ‘black’ book, some kind of offline written documentations of the sites you have joined. Record username, password, and security questions.

2. Passwords – It may be frustrating, but if you have to make up a strong password. Use a combination of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, and numbers. For those with access to the root of their servers whether it is theirs or purchased through a webhost, you can also include symbols. (cPanel users have this ability.) Make those passwords no less than 8 characters.

3. Security Questions – Even if it says ‘Who is your favorite uncle?’, do not put your uncle’s name. Try a separate type of password other than your chosen password for your account. Make it difficult for even those who may know some things about you.

4. Try to avoid clicking the box that says ‘remember my password.’ Log in each time and remember to clear your cache if you have not set your computer to automatically clear cache (computer cookies – remembers information you send.)

5. Always make sure the service you enter is not collecting passwords. If you are not sure – avoid.

6. Try not to document your passwords to an Excel file unless you password protect that file.

7. Try not to always use the same password for everything.

These are just a few suggestions. What other suggestions do you have?

Yes, I am continuing my SEO 101 topics. My previous article was SEO 101: The Article And Its Content. This time I am covering meta tags.

What are meta tags?

It is a meta element. By Wikipedia:

A meta element is HTML or XHTML used to provide structured metadata about a Web page.

In a webpage, they are usually located before the coding for the body elements, and also before the ending anchor tag for the header. The meta tags for a page in particular allow the webmaster to select keywords best suited to described their site in a way for search engines to efficiently place their site. Yes, meta tags can be used toward search engine optimization.

To use them effectively you must choose keywords that best describe your site. It is best to not choose too many keywords. No more than a dozen will do as you also have the ability to include keywords in your article titles, your content and more. In fact, the All in One SEO Pack is a great little sidekick to have for those running sites with WordPress.

Choosing keywords that are not relevant or choosing too many are abusing the true function of the meta tag, and you would more than likely find yourself dubbed as keyword stuffing. Your title and content should follow your keywords, which all should lead back to your basic focus of your site – for those who have followed my blog, I talk about this from time to time.

However, not all search engines will look at the metadata, while others might. To best understand any search engine, you should read any information they offer that can give you a clue on how they crawl websites. So, in some cases, it may be moot to use meta tags. On the other hand, you will want to use them to increase your sites chances of a possible higher ranking, and above all, the possibility to attract more visitors looking for what you are talking about.

Do you use meta tags? If so, what suggestions do you have for others?

So, I guess I should make it at least official. Blogrity is a social bookmark site built with the WordPress core. Of course, the site is pretty raw on design, but it is functional, and I am hoping that some of you might try signing up and submit your links to the site. I am just at the point that I need people to try it out, feel free to give some imput, and hopefully through that, I can add more features.

One thing on mind once I get to a comfortable point, I develop and will offer up to my own ‘digg’ type button that you can bring back to your website, or perhaps offer it to the other places like Sociable or that like so bookmarking your links will be easier.

For categories, I am not going to get too detailed on the categories. I would like them to not exactly resemble Digg’s categories where sometimes the article might not fit. I will be open to adding more general categories. I want to thank Webmasterish for some of the help provided along the way to get to this point. In fact, I probably should have mentioned the site before.

Do you think you might try out Blogrity?