Are Your Social Networking Updates Keyword Friendly?

Are you aware that your status updates from many Social Networks are now appearing in real time search results from the top search engines? If not, now that you do know you might bear in mind that posting some keyword friendly updates throughout the day could be beneficial.

Here's a brief look at what's been happening:

Google leads the pack with results from groups, companies, celebrities and fan pages from Facebook. Twitter has of course led the way in terms of hitting Googles real time search results, and MySpace is now included as well as FriendFeed. Throw in the new release of Google Buzz and they've just about tackled all the real time Internet activity you can imagine surfing through.

Bing has secured a partnership to provide the on-site search engine for Facebook. Bing is bringing tweets to their search results but according to my research they have not yet started to include updates from Facebook or other networks, although clearly public updates from Facebook will soon be included. You should note that only the status updates that are visible to everyone within your Facebook Fan Page privacy settings will be included in the search results from Bing.

Yahoo search results contain updates from Twitter... I could go on but this isn't about the techy details.

What is it about?

As I've mentioned many times in regards to Do-It-Yourself Internet Marketing, it's not about getting visitors in the billions to your web site and Social Networking sites. It's about getting as many qualified visitors as you can if you want to really generate sales. Having seen how the search engines are beginning to treat real time updates within their search results, I see an opportunity to find qualified fans to visit your Facebook Fan Page, qualified followers to hit you up on Twitter and overall a qualified audience in terms of marketing within your Social Networks.

Which of course brings me back to the title of this blog post. Are Your Social Networking Updates Keyword Friendly?

Another Thumbs Up for HootSuite

Back in November 09 HootSuite added some great features to their super useful service for managing Twitter accounts. I've recommended HootSuite in the past along with a handful of other options, but after using these new features for a few months I think I'm comfortable with HootSuite on a whole new level. Now in addition to managing multiple Twitter accounts and having the ability to import up to five RSS feeds per account, the following features have made busy days quick and easy when it comes to Social Networking tasks.

Support for Twitter Lists

In October 09 Twitter integrated a great feature called Twitter Lists. Using that feature you can organize those you follow into categories. With HootSuite now supporting the lists you can create tabs and/or columns for following Twitter users in a much more organized manner and in a lot less time.

Support for Facebook and LinkedIn

With Facebook and LinkedIn tuned in you can now create columns for these networks, read your friends’ status updates and update multiple Facebook accounts. The Facebook integration also offers in-line commenting. I find this a huge time saver as I can check in on My Dart Shirts Fan Page, Dart League Fan Page, Profile and LinkedIn all while doing the daily task of logging in to update my Twitter accounts.

Log In Once, Update Them All

To sum things up, MySpace now offers you the ability to have your Twitter feed update your status on your MySpace Profile through RSS. With that feature enabled and a quick login at HootSuite consider how quickly and easily you can update your Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, MySpace status and LinkedIn all within a few keystrokes and clicks! Then easily browse through your tabs and columns faster to read up on all of the Social Networks you follow.

I've found these new features to be an absolute time saver on a daily basis. And despite this being old news as things travel online, I wanted to give it a full test drive before blogging away about it. The comments are open for discussion, way to go HootSuite!

Are You Buzzin' Yet?

Facebook Fraud: The New 419 Scam?

I had to raise an eyebrow last night when I caught the late night news report about a Local Radio Host Scammed By Facebook Fraud. Reason being I recently submitted an article for my Internet Strategies column on the very subject of protecting yourself online, and within the column I covered the very Facebook scam that this individual fell for.

You have to wonder how these scammers can be so clever as to get into your private account considering the majority of these criminals that have been caught or scammed themselves are about as smart as a sack of hammers.

Clearly everyone will recommend changing your password often or using something clever. In addition I suggest the less Facebook shenanigans you click through, the less chances of inadvertently going somewhere you shouldn't be. I say that not only as an alert to privacy but also to help avoid all of those crazy viruses you see popping up from time to time. By shenanigans I mean hitting ignore when you get requests to play a game, upload your picture to an application to add a ribbon to it or install an application that allows you to change Facebook to the old version. Be critical of the things you play with on Facebook and the better off you'll be.

And on the subject of passwords, be sensible. If you're using your cats name as a password and you have publicly posted "I love my cat Fuzzy Paws", it shouldn't be too hard for a crook to give that a shot at your login. During a recent password audit at a company, it was found that a receptionist was using the following password:

"MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento"

When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

Okay that's not true (I think) but you get the idea. Be aware on Facebook and approach the fun and games part of it with caution. I've heard the chat module has been manipulated to obtain access to accounts therefore I keep it turned off. I try to avoid clicking on antything without close scrutiny such as video links that do not go to a known video site (YouTube for example) or external links that have been shortened (for example: http://tinyurl/123456789).

Be safe so you won't be sorry and if any of your friends send you a message asking you to wire money, pick up the phone and check it out with that friend or do what you can to send the scammer on a safari in search of money you never sent. Sometimes scamming the scammer can be very entertaining.