Artroute.com is my bookmarklets hub

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8255729.stm

Google launched Internet Stats online tool – worth to check and use – http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats

This Google resource brings together the latest industry facts and insights. These have been collected from a number of third party sources covering a range of topics from macroscopic economic and media trends to how consumer behaviour and technology are changing over time.

Step One: Define Your Goals and Target Community

Before you launch your presence on Twitter, determine what specific goals and objectives you want to accomplish. Then parlay that into a methodical plan to build a community around that goal, including defining your target audience.

Step Two: Find and Follow Like-Minded Tweeters

Once you’ve set up a Twitter account, use www.Search.Twitter.com, www.Twellow.com, www.TweepSearch.com, www.TweetBeep.com, and similar tools to find other tweeters who share the same interests as you and would appear to make good members of your fledgling community. Then follow them.

Step Three: Read and Learn

For a week or two, read the tweets posted by those whom you are following and learn from them. Understand what their interests are and how they use Twitter to communicate with others. Note which tweets and tweeters are the most appealing to you and why.

Step Four: Create Effective, Compelling Tweets

When you’re ready to begin tweeting, first determine what topics you will write about. One of the most effective strategies is to position yourself as a subject matter expert in one or two areas. Make sure those topics directly relate to the community you’re trying to build. And take a thoughtful approach by writing clever, interesting tweets that are likely to be retweeted by others.

As is the case with pretty much everything on the Internet, content is king on Twitter. Build a strong foundation for your “Twitter brand” and give other tweeters a reason to follow you by adhering to these basic dos and don’ts when composing your tweets…

Do…

· Feature newsworthy items

· Divulge “inside information”

· Share original thoughts and ideas

· Participate in conversations

· Provide useful links

· Ask engaging questions

· Inject personality and humor

· Retweet when appropriate

Don’t…

· Discuss what you had for breakfast

· Tweet too frequently or infrequently

· Ignore questions or comments by other tweeters

· Try to promote your product or service in every tweet

Step Five: Develop Unique Content for Your Community

In addition to writing focused, compelling tweets, another important key to success in building a strong community on Twitter is to create special content that will be of interest to your followers. One of the most effective types of content enables the members of your community to easily find and interact with each other, such as lists of experts and leaders who tweet about subjects that directly pertain to your community. In my case, I developed a series of unique marketing-related lists:

· www.SystemicMarketing.com/top-cmos-on-twitter

· www.SystemicMarketing.com/top-marketing-book-authors-on-twitter

· www.SystemicMarketing.com/top-marketing-professors-on-twitter

more – http://www.social2b.com/index.php/2009/06/15/seven-steps-to-creating-a-b2b-community-on-twitter/

Today, a new website is invisible on the Internet.

Take for example my little fun project, LinksFor.Us, a tool that shows bloggers who is linking to and talking about their posts. Thank God I have no interest in making money with it, but suppose I did.

LinksFor.Us is invisible. How would you find it? Googling “blogs?” Yeah right! All the search engine and AdWords optimization in the world wouldn’t put a new website at the top of a Google search for “links to blogs.”

So what could I do? Take out ads in a magazine that bloggers read? Oops, bloggers don’t read print. Okay I’ll advertise on actual blogs! Oops, bloggers read blogs in RSS readers that (generally) don’t show ads.

LinksFor.Us is invisible. I suppose with enough money anything can be noticed, but in practice it ain’t gonna happen. Certainly not if I wanted to bootstrap a little company from it.

The days of “have a website and advertise” are over. It’s too expensive to be noticed on an Internet that’s already full.

Social media is the only way LinksFor.Us could get traction. If Darren Rowse or Brian Clark talks about it, it’s visible. If it hits the front page of Digg, it’s visible. Once it’s visible, once you have things like incoming links and lots of regular traffic, then you have a shot at using traditional SEO techniques for staying visible. But social media is the only way to overcome static friction (short of spending crazy money).

read more http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/why-you-have-to-engage-in-social-media-even-if-you-dont-want.html

LinksFor.Us gives you link-sharing stats for any web page.

• Every time posted on Reddit, votes up and down, the subreddit, number of comments
• Every time posted to Digg: votes, comments, categories, titles, descriptions
• Del.icio.us bookmark count, with tag list
• Mixx and Sphinn stats
• Twitters of the link plus the TinyURL and several other shortened forms.

It’s fun for bloggers because you can monitor how your posts are doing, whether new comments have been written, and which link-sharing sites are working for you.

It’s fun for snooping/research because you can see how other people’s posts are doing.  See which link-sharing sites work best for other bloggers in your space — maybe you should be concentrating on those too!

It’s useful for businesses because you can track who’s talking about your company website or blog.

This is a transparent project, meaning that I’m going to be posting about its stats, how it’s promoted, which marketing techniques work, and the technology behind it