How to Preview Shortened URL's

Yesterday a friend of mind sent me an email with the header "Quote".  Immediately I was alarmed because #1, she is a very busy executive and normally doesn't email me.  She calls me if she needs to talk.  #2, the context of the email was off for what our normal conversations would be.

So, without opening the link in her email, I emailed her back and asked her if it was really her.  "Yes, it's me Rebecca.  How are you today?".  My red flag was still there.  I didn't open her email.

It turns out, as you may have already guessed that her email was hacked.  It ran two or three layers deep unfortunately, as she teaches a class at a local college and a lot of her students opened her email link.  She has an expert repairing it all, but what a pain this has become for her!

This leads me to today's post.  I have been receiving a newsletter for years from Bob Rankin (www.askbobrankin.com).  He's a techie who has provided a wealth of information for me over the years.  I highly recommend you check out his newsletter and sign up.  His newsletter today talks about how to preview shortened URL's, such as Goo.gl, bit.ly and TinyURL.

This is taken directly from his newsletter;

Goo.gl and bit.ly – simply append a “+” (plus) symbol to the end of the shortened URL in your browser’s address bar and press Enter.

Is.gd – lets you append a “-“ (minus) symbol to the shortened URL in its effort to woo ironic, contrarian hipsters.

TinyURL – add the prefix “preview.” (with the dot) to the beginning of the shortened URL, e. g. preview.tinyurl.com/aSefG2o5. Sigh; TinyURL was once a brilliant innovation.

Read more here: http://askbobrankin.com/security_tip_preview_shortened_urls.html#ixzz2kjzrCo5O

Great advice!  Take precautions when you can to safeguard your online presence.

Google Finally Catches Up and Offers Personalized URLs

Google announced today that it will finally offer personalized URL's to established accounts.  For those of us in the social media industry, this is a long time coming.  Most of the other mainstream social media platforms allow you to personalize your URL, which makes it easier to brand, copy and tell others what your Google + account is!

The accounts that will be eligible for these URL's are established accounts that have these qualifications;

1. The account must be at least 30 days old.
2. The account must have at least 10 followers.
3. The account must have a profile picture.

Not to much to ask for, for some personalization!  Way to go Google!!

Value of a Social Media Marketer

Whether you are working for a company handling all of their social media marketing, or own your own consulting practice offering the same to your clients, we all at one time or another have come up against those that still do not believe in the power of social media marketing.

I can't blame them really.  Especially those that have been brought up in the trenches of traditional marketing.  Give me a really great email marketing list and press release service, a think-tank of creative minds that put together an incredible marketing plan and you've got all you need, right?

Not anymore.  If you have a business today and aren't online, you are missing the boat.

How do you prove your worth as a social media marketer?  How do you convince your company to participate in (and budget for) social media marketing?

Gather your data and create a cohesive presentation before you march into their office to prove your worth.  Research current statistics that will give you information about return-on-investment for your company.  Conduct searches specific to your industry and how social media has benefited other companies.

Decide what the marketing goals of the company are.  Do they want to increase revenues?  Are they more interested in creating buzz about their products?   Are they open to having contests and giveaways?  How much flexibility will they give you to market their company?  Once you find out what their goals are, start outlining how you are going to achieve those goals through your social media efforts.

Most companies want to see a return on their investment.  Some will ask for a guarantee in numbers of followers or increased sales.  This is not something we do and will address this in another post.  To prove your worth, you are going to have to measure your effectiveness in other terms, such as visibility across the internet, increased followers, increased engagement with potential customers, etc. 

Keep in mind that for every company that doesn't see the value in hiring a social media consultant, there is another one waiting in the wings to utilize the power of social media to grow their business.  

Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our

 talents and abilities

 were used in a way that served others. 

~ Marianne Williamson

How Do You Find Your Clients?

Here at ScribeTree, we are continually trying to update our skills, stay on top of the latest software platforms that will help us help our clients better and find time to get a little reading in on the side.  Right now we are reading "The Tao of Pooh" while we are going through a series of workshops.  This lead us to the quote that you see on the image above.  It begs the question, "how do you find your clients?".  

We'd like to hear from you.  What sources do you use, what websites do you frequent, what events do you attend?  What works for you and what doesn't.

We all love to help people, but how do we find them to begin?

Biz Food 4 Thought: The World Has Been Ending Since the Beginning of Time

I heard this phrase the other day for the first time.  Can you believe that?  I’m sure that this phrase has been around at least for my whole lifetime.  And yet, I have never heard it.  I have never heard, done or experienced a lot of things.  But, I also know that the same is true for a lot of people.

The world has been ending since the beginning of time.  What does that phrase mean to you?  To me, it means – don’t worry and don’t stress because no matter what you do and what the outcome, we are all headed in the same direction. We are all on the same path, whether we want to admit it or not.

As I relate this phrase to business, I think... move forward and go after your dreams.  No matter what happens, the world is ending eventually and we are all going back to where we came from.  While we are on this earth, why not throw all abandon to the wind?  Why not purposefully choose to let go of your everyday stresses?  Why not start today and live the life you really want to live?

While we are here, we get a finite number of days to do what our hearts really want us to do.  What’s holding you back?  The world has been ending since the beginning of time.

5 Minutes To Delight You

Five (5) minutes is the average amount of time that a person has while they are in a coffee shop waiting for their coffee or at the train station waiting for the train to arrive or perhaps at a restaurant waiting for their friends.  Five (5) minutes.  Facebook is betting on those 5 minutes to surprise and delight you.

According to Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's Chief Technology Officer, those five minutes are what Facebook's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Team is looking at refining.  Particularly, they want to tweak the algorithm that regulates the social network's News Feed.

Their AI team is working from a MIT Technology Review to incorporate a deep learning technology, which uses simulated networks of brain cells to process data.

Facebook is employing the ultimate learning method to better understand it's users.  Now, if we could just use that technology to figure out why people drive 50 miles per hour in the fast lane!

AdSense for HTTPS Sites Enabled

To protect user's sensitive data through Google's Adsense program, they announced today that AdSense publishers can begin monetizing their HTTPS pages.  Because HTTPS-enabled sites require that all content on the page, including the ads, be Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-compliant, Google will remove all non-SSL compliant ads from competing in the auction on these pages.

To enable the AdSense on your HTTPS-enabled sites, you just have to create an ad unit and paste the ad code into the HTML source code of your page.

To find out more about the Adsense program and ad code support, click here.