Today’s Best

Mar 08

Revver

This site is best known for the revenue sharing program that they offer, considered to be one of the easiest types for earning. For social networking, Revver offers superior embedded player design and very good quality video. Their QuickTime files work best, but they also do Flash conversions and you have 100MB file size limit.

YouTube

You can’t make a list of top video sites without including YouTube, of course. For sheer visibility, this is the site many marketers choose. However, their strict regulations and changing rules mean that it’s not necessarily the best site. The quality of video is so-so and you are limited to 100MB or 10 minutes for videos.

Vimeo

The video quality of Vimeo is very good, but you do need be careful to follow their rules. The embedded player is very easy to use and you can upload any length of video, as long as it’s only 250 MB. However, you need to keep in mind that this is also the weekly upload limit.

Veoh

With very good quality video and audio, easy to use upload system and a quality embedded player design, this video sharing site is a popular one with marketers and anyone who needs to get the word out about their business. There are also no size limits on Veoh, so you can go wild with longer videos.

Blip.tv

Blip is another good place to set up video account. There is a 100MB file size limit, but the top quality (blip.tv has the highest quality video of all these sites) and extremely easy to use uploader make up for that. This is the preferred spot for anyone who is more concerned about quality than popularity.

DivX Stage6 Beta

This is a high end, slightly complicated video site that requires more than the usual steps to set everything up. That being said, the quality is excellent, second only to blip.tv and you have a full 2GB limit for videos.

VodPod

This is a hidden treasure that I’ll tell you about. It’s not a video uploading site, instead it’s a video organizer. The secret of this service is the widget. They offer the best ways to display your videos on your blog. I use them all the times on my personal blog Fantasticos4. You can display the video icon anywhere you want. It will enlarge the screen when your reader clicks it. I also love using their video sequence widget. You can display a series of videos in order. This can be done horizontal or vertical. Try it out, you’ll have fun with it.

All of these video sharing sites are easy enough to use, so if you are looking to get into videos, then check these sites out. It’s a great way to really create a bond with your visitors and interact with them.

Tagged with: video • video sharing

Oct 26

12 Great Social Media WordPress Plugins

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom, Today's Best 5 Comments »

Many people are using WordPress as their blogging platform these days, simply because it works so well. On top of that, the number of plugins that are available for the platform is impressive. While I would like to point out all my favorite plugins, it might be better if I just point out some of the best lists out there.

You have: the 20 Best WordPress Plugins with real innovative ideas. Then the 18 most downloaded plugins will give you an idea on what people consider to be most useful. If you have time and interest in this subject, then go to Top Wordpress Plugins 2009 and the absolute best and comprehensive guide: Top 160 Wordpress Plugin.

Incorporating social media into your WordPress blog is just one way to make use of these plugins. I’ve assembled my favorite social media plugins right here.

Antisocial: This plugin displays a number of small icons to make it easy for readers to share and bookmark your content on social media. The benefit of this plugin is that everything is no-follow, so all the link juice stays right on your blog.

Add to Any Bookmark Button: This creates a bookmarking button on your site that lets the user choose which bookmarking site they want to use.

Digg This: If you are a Digg user, you know how quickly something can go viral on this site. That’s why this plugin is so popular, as it lets visitors share your content directly with Digg.

Gregarious: With this plugin, you can easily promote your content on a number of social media sites, including Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. It’s also customizable so you can set it up how you want it.

I Love Social Bookmarking: With this handy WordPress plugin, your visitors can vote for your content. There is a drop down menu that keeps everything nice and neat and uncluttered on your blog and allows visitors to choose which social media site they want to vote on.

Notable: This is much like Antisocial in that it places a number of social media icons on your blog for visitors to vote on. It doesn’t use no-follow links, however.

Share This: When you want to target specific social media sites, this is the plugin to use. It will let you decide which sites to let your users bookmark your content on. This is particularly useful if you are looking to do a campaign directed at a specific site.

SphinnIt Button: For those who use Sphinn to promote their internet marketing blogs, this plugin works well to encourage visitors to use Sphinn.

Sociable: This is actually another version of AntiSocial . . . just without the no-follow links.

WP Super Cache: Once you start to get a lot of traffic, you can end up crashing your server. No one wants that, so this plugin is a good idea before you start getting too much traffic. It will cache your pages and load them as static pages if you get too many hits, preventing a crash.

While writing this post, I just installed:

Comment Luv: Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

BackType Connect: Show related conversations (from other blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and more) inline with your own comments.

You might not need more than one or two of these plugins at a time, but depending on what your intention is and which social media sites you are aiming to get higher rankings on, you can choose which plugin works best. Which ones are you using?

Tagged with: plugins • Social Media • Social media plugin • WordPress

Oct 05

Top Twitter Search Engines

Today's Best No Comments »

While Twitter is a pretty useful networking tool, it works best when you have access to the information you need. It would be very tedious to go through hundreds of profiles, looking for people who are interested in the same things as you. Twitter does have a search, but there are now many other options that will let you find the people or tweets you are looking for quickly and easily.

Finding People

Until recently, it was pretty time consuming to find people that you wanted to network with. You could search for relevant blogs and sites on Google, then follow anyone from those that was on Twitter. These days, though, there is a much easier way . . . several, in fact.

Twellow: The Yellow Pages of Twitter, this site lets you quickly and easily find people related to your field. You can search by profession or subject and Twellow will pull up profiles that match the search.

Tweetscan: This very simple site allows you to search by topic. If you’re looking for people in social media, for example, you would simply type in “social media” and you’d get back the results of everyone who uses those keywords in their profile.

TwitterPacks: If you are in a hurry, this could be the way to go. Pick a “pack” which is based on a specific niche or location and follow everyone on it. This gives you hundreds of new contacts in a very short period of time, but you might want to be careful, since there are bound to be a few bad apples. These are all user recommended though.

Who Should I Follow?: Like the name suggests, this is a site that recommends people for you to follow, based on your existing friends. It then tells you which of your friends each recommendation is similar to.

Twubble: This is an interesting Twitter search. It goes through your friends friends and recommends the best ones for you to follow. This saves you time searching through everyone’s contact lists, which can be quite daunting.

Just Tweet It: Search for Twitter users by career choice on this handy search engine. There don’t seem to be huge numbers of people using this site yet, but it could still be very useful.

Mr. Tweet: Billed as “your personal networking assistant”, this site allows you to follow influencial people on the popular social networking site.

Just these sites should keep you pretty busy adding people to your contact list, but you can also still do things the old-fashioned way, through Twitter search or by befriending people who publish their Twitter ID on their blogs or forums.

Tagged with: people • search engine • social network • twitter

Sep 02

The Best YouTube Tutorials

Today's Best 4 Comments »

Most people think of text based applications such as Twitter, when they think of social media. Video, however, is a rapidly growing medium online and many prefer to watch something on a video than read it on a webpage. Offering video connections to your audience can really be a great way to boost your public profile. YouTube is certainly the most popular of all the video social media sites, so it is well worth learning more about it if you aren’t an expert already.

How It Works

YouTube is a fairly simple site in that it allows anyone to set up an account and makes uploading videos extremely easy. You can tag your video, add a keyword rich description and add your own URL. Many experts also encourage adding your URL to the actual movie.

The video site has also recently come out with more advanced features that allow you to advertise in popups on the actual video. However, if you don’t understand even the basics of uploading a video, then you should start there.

Getting Started

To begin with, you’ll need a great idea for a video. While any old video will provide options for linkbuilding, you won’t get the views needed to boost it up in the ranks. A truly great video will catch people’s attention and receive plenty of links to it. People may even embed it on their websites and that means your URL will be seen across the web, if you have included it within the video. While this doesn’t count as a linkback, it can encourage people to go to your site.

What makes a great video? Well, the most popular ones on YouTube are comedy videos. You’ll also find that in the business category, videos that are truly useful will offer a lot more value and gain more visitors than those that are merely ads. Offer some quality information and make your video interesting to make sure it becomes popular.

If you need more information, here are some quality YouTube guides that can show you a lot more on how to get the most out of the site.

Beginners

How to Use YouTube to Get Your Message Out

YouTube 101 for Small Businesses

Expose Yourself on YouTube

Intermediate

34 Ways to Use YouTube for Business

Use YouTube to Promote Your Website

Getting the Most Out of YouTube

Advanced

9 YouTube Features You May Not Know About

How to Customize Your YouTube Channel

Did I leave any tutorial out? any other tip?

Tagged with: guides • Social Media • video marketing • YouTube

Aug 27

The Best Twitter Applications

Today's Best 2 Comments »

Often it seems that the very definition of social media is against productivity, but many people have realized that they can actually increase how effective they are by adding certain applications. Twitter is one social media site that is easy to use and has a large number of apps that can help make it even more useful.

The Twitter site itself can be a little awkward to use, but there’s really no reason to use it if you have the option of dozens of applications that do the same job and better.

Business and Productivity

If you are on Twitter to promote your business, you know how time consuming it can be. Fortunately, there are some great options for staying productive while maintaining an active web presence. Many people have turned to sites like TweetLater, which allow you to set up tweets to be published at a later time or date. This lets you maintain a presence even if you aren’t online for a day or two.

More and more sites are integrating with Twitter to make it possible to use the social networking tool anywhere you please. From iPhones to regular cell phones, you can now access Twitter anytime, anywhere.

Here are a few of the best Twitter applications that I’ve found:

Business

twhirl: A popup access to Twitter that allows you to check the basics of your account with a click of the mouse.

BubbleTweet: Add a popup video to your profile page for a unique introduction.

Monittor: Find out what people are saying about your business online.

TweetDeck: Allows for searches and multiple columns to track groups, tweets on specific keywords, among other things.

TwitScoop: See at a glance what the trending topics on Twitter are.

TweetCounter: Display your Twitter follower number on your website and invite people to follow you.

Blogging

TwitterFeed: Auto tweets your latest blog posts. It was recommended on ProBlogger by Darren Rowsy.

Twitterfox: A Firefox plugin that allows bloggers to pop up a simple version of their home page with the click of a button.

CommentTwitter: This plug-in for bloggers lets commentors automatically tweet the comment they leave on your blog.

Followers

TweetSpinner: Let´s you check who is following you that you aren’t following back and vice versa. Great for tracking followers.

WeFollow: An excellent Twitter directory that allows you to find people to follow.

Twellow: Another Twitter directory that lets you find people of certain interests based on keywords.

Friend or Follow: Shows who is following you that you aren’t following back and vice versa.

There are many others, but the ones I’ve listed here have actually helped me save time and exploit Twitter. What have you used? Can you share the best app you’ve seen so far?

Aug 06

Twitter is Back – & the #LATISM Party Too

Latinos in Social Media 4 Comments »

We were all holding our breaths this morning while Twitter suffered a significant outage due to a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. I was about to take off my rolos and go rent a movie for tonight. But now Twitter is back, so is our #LATISM Party!

Today, we will unveil the secrets of Raul Ramos – Sanchez. He is the author of the novel “America Libre” which was selected as a 2009 USA Today Summer Read. The second panelist will be UrbanJibaro, creator of http://SofritoForYourSoul.com and one of the first Latino In Social Media. The third panelist will be Lee Romano Sequera, head of http://GoodtoBeYou.com

We have great prizes today:
1) 1 Swarovski Crystal Shirt Design from Lee Romano Sequera http://goodtobeyou.com/latina.html
2) Book: America Libre by Raul Ramos from Hachette Book Group http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780446507752.htm
3) Book: Amigoland by Oscar Casares from Hachette Book Group http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780316159692.htm
4) Book: Damas, Dramas and Ana Ruiz by Belinda Acosta from Hachette Book Group http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780446540513.htm
5) $50 iTune Gift Card from http://Apple.com
6) 2 American Airlines Admiral Club Passes from http://www.theaxisagency.com

Don’t forget to bring your friends and have them join our Facebook group. Whoever brings the highest number of friends to the Facebook group will not only win a prize, but will also be able to select any of the 6 prizes listed above. This time however, the prize will be given at 9:00 PM (it will be my first #LATISM Party tweet before the loud music turns on). Just have your friends tweet:

” I’ve been invited to the #LATISM Party by @yourusername and to join Latinos in Social Media http://tinyurl.com/ck6bhy I’m in”

Please remember to follow all the new members in order to make it a reciprocal conversation and to make them feel welcomed.

For those of you joining the #LATISM Party for the first time, you might want to use a chat room application such as: http://tweetchat.com/room/latism

See you today at 9:00 pm EST. Bring maracas, flan de leche, tambores, arroz congri, con guandules, con abichuelas negras, locrio de pollo, tamales, pozoles, arepa, and more!

Tagged with: Latinos in Social Media • latism

Jul 29

Latinos in Social Media

Latinos in Social Media 5 Comments »

Welcome to all our new members! We have 1032 new members in our Latinos in Social Media Facebook Group since the last Twitter #LatISM party a week ago. As a result, we are launching another fun party this Thursday from 9:00 to 10:00 pm EST.

The point of #LatISM is to help its members promote their businesses, blogs and Social Media campaigns. Also to provide a common platform that will place the member’s profile in front of large and small companies as well as non-profit organizations that target the Latino market.

Tomorrow, we will connect, network, promote, make noise, win more prizes and the most important: HAVE FUN! the only way Latino(a)s know how to party.

This week’s prizes are:

1) a $50 Gift Card from BabysRus

2) an iPod Shuffle from Walmart

3) a Sterling Silver Emerald Bracelet from Diamond International

4) a JetFlash USB Flash Drive – 16 GB from CompUSA

I would like to thank our sponsors who have seen the value of Latinos in Social Media.

Remember to follow the organizers:

@NancyPerez @UrbanJibaro @JuanTornoe @LuisPagan @LatISM and me! AnaRC

Also remember to follow each other. Every new member should feel the warm welcome of all the #LatISM members follow. To make it easier to find you, please tweet:

“I’m going to the #LatISM party on Thursday at 9:00 pm EST. Come join the Latinos in Social Media http://tinyurl.com/ck6bhy to have fun and win great prizes”

This way, we can all look for the hashtag #LatISM and follow all the participants while we also promote the Party and help get trending. Now Twitter’s home page lists the top 23 trends!

Finally, remember to invite all your friends in Twitter. Everyone’s welcome.

For those of you joining a Twitter party for the first time, a great way to follow will be using a TwitterChat application like: http://www.facebook.com/l/;http://tweetchat.com/room/latism

Having said all this, I would love to hear some suggestions about our #LatISM parties. Please share some ideas: What can we do to make it more useful, more fun, more fruitful, more creative?

Tagged with: Latinos in Social Media • latism • linkedin • Social Media

Jun 17

Best Guides to Blogging

Today's Best 2 Comments »

Blogging has grown from simple online journal and diary entries in the 1990’s comprised of the user’s thoughts and reflections on a topic to a full-blown cultural phenomenon. As the internet migrated from Web 1.0 to a more interactive Web 2.0, blogging has also become more interactive and the topics more extensive. Some businesses employ bloggers to promote their brands and products, while others use bloggers to as experts in a subject area. Many look to blogging to supplement their income or to take advantage of the opportunity to work from home. Currently there are over one hundred million blogs on the internet with more joining the blogosphere each day.

How to Start

So, if you are considering starting a personal or blog, what are the questions you should ask yourself? In a series of articles about blogging, Susan Gunelius shares the following guidelines with us:

Do you enjoy surfing the internet?
Do you enjoy writing?
Are you passionate about your blog’s topic?
Can you commit to blogging?
Are you comfortable with having your thoughts and options being public?
Are you committed to using technology?
Are you willing to take risks?

I would add to that list these questions: why do you believe you need a blog and are you the type of person who likes to interact with others? While a blog can be useful, not every enterprise needs a blog and it may not be the appropriate vehicle to promote your business or product. My second question is posed because a successful blogger needs interaction with other blog sites and with his or her readers.

Once you have answered these questions, there are a number of sources available to help you establish a successful blog. As mentioned earlier, there is a collection of posts available on about.com that range from a beginner’s guide to starting a blog to a job forum for bloggers. A second site with lots of good information for beginners is Blogging for Beginners.

Life123 is another site with outstanding resources for bloggers. Not only does Life123 provide a list of the top guides to blogging, but there are also posts on using templates, types of blogs and making money by writing blogs. In addition to online resources to blogging, Life123 provides information on two print resources on blogging, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging and Blogging for Dummies.

How Often Should You Blog?

Depending on the type of blogging you do, it can be a quick to write, or if the blog requires research, it can take considerably more time. So, do you have time to blog? The standard rule of thumb has been that a blog must be posted every day in order to attract and maintain readers. However, Eric Kintz offers several reasons why daily blog posts are no longer de rigueur, and may indeed be detrimental to the maturity of you blog. Seth Grodin, one of the web’s premier bloggers, feels that RSS fatigue is setting in and by posting too frequently, you may actually turn off your readers.

Now it is Your Turn

Now that we have shared some information on creating a blog and resources that are available to helping you maintain your blog, we would like you to share your thoughts in comments. Do you have a blog? How do you use your blog? How often do you blog? What are your favorite blogging resources? Do you agree with Seth Grodin that we may be facing blogging overload?

Best Blogging Guides

Beginners

Blogging for Beginners

Starting a Blog

The Newbie’s Guide to Blogging

What is a Blog?

Intermediate

Blogging Tips

Daily Blogging Tips

Grow a Blog

Monetize a Blog

Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore

Blogging Services

Dummies Guide to Blogger

WordPress Lessons

Collections

Articles on Blogging

Life123

Print

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging

Blogging for Dummies

Tagged with: Blogging • Social Media

Jun 11

A Powerful Demographic in Social Media

Latinos in Social Media 3 Comments »

Social media in the United States, dominated by White, English-speaking users and pundits, may reflect the majority demographic of online users; however, another group that is on the rise in the world of social media, the Latino demographic.

Why is this group important? According to recent US census figures, one in every six Americans is Latino and the group will only grow in the coming decades.

“While the Latino population is now the nation’s “largest minority”, more importantly the demographic accounts for 50 percent of the total U.S. population growth. Twenty percent of all young adults and 20 percent of mothers of children under 18 are Hispanic.

“Think of the implications of that growth 10, 20, 30 years from now. What will the media landscape look like in 2025?” (Keri Allen, You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know)

Boden PR published a thought piece detailing the use of social media of Hispanics earlier this year.

“- An estimated 20% of Hispanics online are considered ‘Hispanic-fluentials.’ Hispanics are more likely than any other segment to pass on both positive and negative reviews/information to friends and family

- Hispanic teens are connected online 24/7 and it’s because this segment values the latest communication tools more than any other. This segment’s likes and dislikes also overlaps into the general market’s (American) teen trends.

- The older and acculturated Generation Y Hispanics turn to online forums and blogs to make everyday decisions from what restaurant to dine at to what car they will purchase next. They are not reading their local papers, but turn to online news instead and like to receive and comment on news more than any other U.S. Hispanic segment.

- U.S. Hispanic Baby Boomers are online, but most are not blogging. They’re online for reference information on topics from investments to healthcare and a majority prefers communication online in Spanish.”

In 2008, approximately 48% of the 45 million strong US Latino population was online. The Captura Group states that the Latino online presence achieved critical mass online in 2008, and grew at a rate of 21% versus 6% in the general population, during the period between June 2007 and June 2008. Not only is this population’s online presence growing, but also they are also more likely to be young, upscale and using the internet for education and empowerment. Latinos are also leading the digital revolution through the creation of websites, blogs, and interaction on social networks. As the Latino population continues to grow, its online presence will continue to gain strength.

In light of this high connectivity and interaction in the Latino demographic, we ask this question–who are the powerhouses in the Latino online communities? Why do you find this people interesting?

We look forward to your comments and suggestions for our upcoming listing of the Latino powerhouses in social media.

Tagged with: hispanic • latino • Social Media

Previous Entries

The Best Twitter Applications

Follow AnaRC

Sponsors

Recent Posts

I Usually Talk About

I host all my sites with these guys

Social Media Blogs