This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Tony's Pizza. All opinions are 100% mine.

PIZZA? 
On a Business Blogging Site?
You are probably asking,
what's this all about?!

As the power of Social Media grows, everyone is trying new ways to reach their public.  We have been a  member  of  Social Spark for  some time. We were contacted recently and asked if we wanted to have some new  Tonys Crispy Crust in the office to try and review,  and  I said  SURE! We love Pizza!

So yesterday we picked up three (of the reasonably priced) frozen pizza's.  Tony's  new  CRISPY CRUST  Cheese, Pepperoni and Supreme, and sampled them all.

The new crisp crust is baked, which I love, and has zero trans-fat. It's a new odd, smaller shape, than the traditional 12" pizza's you might be used to. Most 12" pizza's you buy in the frozen foods run about 15 ounces. This new shape is 8.5"  and about 9-10 ounces. And priced right. About $2 at most stores.

LOOKS - Like MOST  foods, the inside product NEVER looks like the real product. 
                   Could have used more cheese.      1 out 5
TASTE - I like the crust - And we all liked the flavors. I thought it would be crispier however. 
                I prefer  thinner and crisp as opposed to heavier and thicker.  Overall  2.5 out of 5
OVERALL - I would it average. But I rate almost all frozen pizzas average. 
                     For the price, a couple bucks, I think it makes a good  kids pizza.
                     For adults, I think we want more.  But to get more, you have to pay more. 
                     So at the end of the day, I would give them a 3  out of 5.

Tony's Pizza




Derrick  Sorles
Business Blogging Consultants
Web 2.0 and Social Media Strategies

        

I work in Social Media
10 hours a day, 6.5 days a week.

I GET IT!

But a lot of people under-estimate the power of the people. There are still many businesses that have not tapped into the power of the Web 2.0 and Social Media Networks.  When a recent grassroots campaign involved both Facebook and a beloved Golden Girl, the scope of its influence cannot be underestimated. 

 
A couple months ago, someone on Facebook started a campaign to get the 88-year old Betty White a spot on SNL.  People laughed. Even she laughed! 

"I don't even know where that came from," says  White,  "That just came out of left field. It's ridiculous. I don't think ['SNL' creator and producer] Lorne Michaels even knows about it, so we won't worry about it."

Today, sources  say Saturday Night Live is thisclose to signing TV legend Betty White to host the show for the very first time.

But she would not have to host it alone.

We hear SNL is putting together a “Women of Comedy” episode that would team  White with several of her younger contemporaries. Ex-SNL MVP Molly Shannon is on board, we hear, and feelers have also been put out to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. (An NBC spokesperson insists no one has been confirmed at this time.)

This tag-team approach will allow Lorne Michaels to appease White-on-SNL zealots (half a million and counting!) without making the 88-year-old shoulder the burden of all 90 minutes on her own. 

This is the power of Social Media at work!



Derrick  Sorles
Web 2.0 and Social Media Strategist

        

Many online publishers

have been able to turn their hobby/passion into a small business.  Once you have a following  and  good  search engine rankings, many companies will start coming to you with press releases and offers to be featured on your site. They want to reach your readers. Some will even pay to advertise on your site.

We get hundreds of press releases each month. Businesses wanting to be featured on our sites. It's just like a magazine or any other publication. Free things are given all the time, with the hopes the writer or publication will write about the product.  But now the FTC wants disclaimers ran.

        

What is the secret to being found?

to the Web 2.0?
 
to Social Media?

There is no ONE  secret!

It's many pieces of a pie. And if you only have a website for your business, you only have one tiny piece. You need many more pieces!

This graphic is not a great visual but it does show a variety of pieces to be considered.  There was also a great article on Mashable this week by  Brian Solis.

We have been preaching this for  4  years  now - and Brian think's the time is right.
 
"At last, 2010 is expected to be the year that social media goes mainstream for business. In speaking with many executives and entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed that the path towards new media enlightenment often hinges on corporate culture and specific marketplace conditions. Full social media integration often happens in stages — it’s an evolutionary process for companies and consumers alike."

We often refer to the process of staging a big broadway show. It's done in steps and is a slow growth process, to reach the finish line. He does a great job of outling the  ten most common stages that businesses experience as they travel the road to full social media integration. It's takes time. It does not happen overnight. But you simply MUST be a part of this new world or your business will be left behind the dust. There is a great distance between where you  are today, and where you need to be.



Read Brians full article outlining the 10 stages of growth.


Derrick Sorles
Blog, Web 2.0, and Social Media Consultant

        

This may seem a little off topic but I'm sharing this because I know many readers are small business owners and or some of you may be planning to launch a business in 2010 and I've found this an extremely useful resource in the business building BS we've been dealing with in our Gay Travel Online Publishing.

 It's easy to search patents on the Internet, but trademarks are still lost in government websites that are not particularly search-friendly.Trademarkia makes trademark search a breeze.

Trademarkia let’s you search all U.S. trademarks filed since 1870, including dead trademarks. The company has scans of all the marks and returns results in a very appealing visual grid. You can search by company, theme, product category, or even filing attorney. Companies can also file a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office through the site.

 

Trademarkia is an excellent resource for anyone researching trademarks, companies getting ready to file a trademark, or even product and brand logo designers. It operates much like a domain registrar like GoDaddy. Instead of searching for available domain URLs, you search for trademarks, and if they are available, you can register them for a fee.

On Trademarkia, for example, you can search all trademarks with a certain image you may want to use to make sure you are not duplicating someone else’s trademark. You can search for dead trademarks as well, and if you like one, you can register it for $159.

You can also can look at all trademarks registered to a company, or sort them to see just the trademarks the company has allowed to expire making them currently available!

        

                            

We have actually used  WOOPRA for the last 1  1/2   years, as part of their  Beta  test program. I loved it. It's a great analytics tool and gave me real time live information about my visitors and the opportunity to even start a live chat with them, while they were on my site! Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. Pretty cool stuff. But now that they have come out of Beta, it comes with a price tag. Whereas Google is all free.


Guest  Author  DANIEL  FOSTER  from  Royal Pingdom did an article recently about the two services. "Google Analytics blows Woopra out of the water where cost is concerned. GA is free for anyone with a Google account and will track a large number of page views for up to 50 sites.

When I started using Woopra six months ago, it was in beta and free for testers. Halfway through writing this review, however, the developer released it for general use and modified the price structure.

A free version is still available, but with major limitations. Freebie accounts are restricted to 30,000 page views a month and data is only stored for 3 months. Small text ads appear at the bottom of the client.

For $4.95 a month, the limit is upped to 100,000 page views and ads are removed. Considering that Woopra updates in real-time and offers such a great user experience, I would be willing to pay this fee if only for one thing: data is retained for only 6 months. Pricier plans store data longer, but even the $49.95 Platinum plan, which tracks 1.25 million page views a month, only keeps statistics for 24 months.

Considering the low cost of storage and the importance of long-term visitor data, this is unacceptable. The limitation can be bypassed by manually exporting data, but this is tedious and forces the user to keep track of the files. While not as streamlined as Woopra, Google Analytics stores data forever at no charge."


Read  his  full article on WOOPRA VS GOOGLE ANALYTICS



Derrick  Sorles
Business Blog Consulting, Web 2.0 and Social Media Strategists

        

While we are all painfully aware Google will not divulge their recipe for a site's success, we do hear about bits and pieces that are leaked, and make sense to follow.   People often ask us, what can I do to get my site ranked higher in search? The reality is it is 101 different little things. 

Hopefully you have a Google account and use their Analytics and Feedburner and countless other free tools like  the  WEBMASTER GUIDELINES. The Guidelines provide a lot of common sense tips that is worth reading annually, to make sure you are doing your best, so that Google gives you the proper treatment when it comes to ranking your site.

Recently I realized I was not compressing my photos and images for the web. A habit I used a long time ago but go away from it, in an effort to save time. It is one extra little step, but can make a difference on how fast your page loads. And I was told Google is now factoring in  LOAD  TIMES to their equation of how a site is ranked.

So when you use in image on your site, make sure it is compressed  or  saved for the web. JPG is the best choice. GIF is the second best choice, and never  use  BMP.  If you have Windows XP there is a way to do it there - if not most photo programs like PhotoShop can do the job easily.

It's one more little step. I know, but will help your site load faster and at the end of the day, it can't hurt!



Derrick  Sorles
Web 2.0  Consultants and Strategists 
Derrick Sorles and Michael Snell - We Help "Pull"  New Business To You!
            Your Business MD's - Business Blog Consultants & Internet Marketers

        

 

Being a professional blogger for  4  years  now, I have been conditioned to follow certain metrics, like  Google  Page Rankings. Lately however, Google is doing a lot of tweaking and revamping and peoples  PR  is jumping up and down like crazy.

Startling news from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa  now  comes  fourth....that Google has ditched PageRank from Webmaster Tools.

 

"We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true," states Moskwa. "We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it." (Source: WebProNews)

SO NOW WHAT? If you work hard on your site and build it's repuation, how do you tell the real good sites from the posers?  PR  was a  way, at a glance, to get a glimpse of a sites authority and realness.

Now we just have to guess?

This could be a big problem I think.....

        

Focus on writing the best content. Let us jazz it up for you.

Simple point & click enrichment of your blog posts (and emails). In real-time, while you type. 
They suggest tags, links, photos, related articles, and more! How much easier can it get?!

With  ZEMANTA, you download  a simple  browser extension. When  you open your blogging software,

BEFORE -

                          



AFTER - it adds bars on the side and bottom to help you quickly import pre-selected images, links and tags, saving you time searching for them! 

                                

Lets you quickly add  Amazon links and Social Media friends as well.


Of course, it does not work with  EVERY blogging platform yet. But it does for most!

ZEMANTA 

 

 

        

JUST  SAY  NO!   To  Blog  Engage!

We first wrote  about BlogEngage in 2008.  It sounded like a cool tool.

But I recently found out they were censoring my gay travel submissions! My sites are not sexual in nature and quite popular with people seeking  LGBT travel  info.  We  are on page one of Google for about 3000  keyword combinations currently, have a page rank of 5, and attract over 40,000  unique readers a month from  150  countries.  We also attract the attention of tourism boards worldwide as well as national advertisers.

MyBlogLog,  BlogCatalog, FaceBook, and many others have no problem with my sites. But apparently, some right wing homophobics keep complaining my gay travel sites are "sexual in nature" - which they are not. So as of today, I am removing all links to Blog Engage, from all of my sites that have been promoting them.

You gotta love censorship, right?


Michael Snell
Derrick  Sorles

        

BloggersBase provides a discovery platform for bloggers, user-generate-content and readers alike. This platform takes the form of an online magazine spanning various topics, each implemented as a multi-authored blog, moderated by algorithm-enhanced crowd wisdom. Their magazine introduces a brand new concept of citizen-journalism, using powerful analytics and unique algorithms.

Bloggers - your audience is here!

Get discovered & monetize on your talent on BloggersBase!
Compete and become a part of an exclusive club of elite professional bloggers!

Readers - Find high quality content that interests YOU to read and watch!
Make a difference by ranking and controlling the content that gets exposed!
Earn recognition for your expertise and gain social status!



CHECK IT OUT! BLOGGER BASE

        

Sorry for the short notice. Sally Falkow and Chris Abraham are going to co-present a free webinar tomorrow, Thursday, May 14, on the subject of digital PR, social media marketing, and blogger relations. This event is at 1PM Eastern time and 10AM Pacific time and you need to register in advance.

How to Do Social Media Marketing:
Bloggers, Social Networks, Metrics, and More

Hear Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus and Chris Abraham of Abraham Harrison talk about the best practices in social media marketing.

Not only is social media marketing the hottest thing in marketing, it may well also be the most effective marketing tool available to anyone doing any form of outreach.The meteoric rise of twitter and the slower but just as large groundswell of blogging have combined to shake communications of all kinds to the core.

But social media marketing isn’t monolithic and it covers a lot of ground. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. But there are best practices, there are tools and tricks and techniques to achieve greater success. Sign up for this webinar to find out how to:

~    use twitter wisely and well
~    reach out effectively to bloggers
~    drive success with social networks
~    combine fronts to multiply your success
~    get your audience to help you reach out
~    measure and understand your success (and failure)
~    Plus many more techniques to help you master social media

Speakers
Sally Falkow is a veteran of the PR industry. She has since translated her experience in marketing, PR and communication to the Internet. Her main interest is in the shift in media consumption and how new technology is affecting the practice of public relations. Sally is the author of the Proactive Report and co-developer of PRESSfeed, a social media tool for PR and marketing professionals.

Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison, is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. Chris is a pioneer in online social networks and publishing, and specializes in web2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

This webinar will take place live on Thursday May 14th at 1 PM EST and 10AM PST. It will include audience participation and will be recorded and made available on demand within two days. Register now!

        

Last week I was approached by
BUSINESS CONSULTING BUZZ
to be a guest writer on their site.

BCB is your one-stop resource center for everything consulting. Whether you’re just starting out, been in the business for a couple of years, are a consulting veteran, or a company looking for information on how to hire good consultants, this is the website for you.

Mike and Sam (or the “Zipursky cousins” as they are often called), created this website with the goal to provide  an arsenal of knowledge to take your consulting business or career to the next level and beyond.



Stop by and see them  and  read my post!

Derrick  Sorles

 Web 2.0  Consultants and Strategists 
Derrick Sorles and Michael Snell - We Help "Pull"  New Business To You!
            Your Business MD's - Business Blog Consultants & Internet Marketers

        

What if there was software with the elegance and extensibility of WordPress but all the features you’ve come to expect from social networks like Facebook?

Now there is: check out BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is an official sister project of WordPress. The idea behind it was to see what would happen to the web if it was as easy for anyone to create a social network as it is to create a blog today. There’s been an explosion of social activity on the web, it’s probably the most important trend of the past few years, but there’s been a dearth of Open Source tools that enable the social web.

In WordPress we have a robust and extensible base that can scale to many millions of users, and BuddyPress is essentially a set of plugins on top of WordPress that add private messaging, profiles, friends, groups, activity streams, and everything else you’ve come to expect from your favorite social network, like a Facebook-in-a-box.

This is just a 1.0 release and it’s not for everybody yet, for example it currently requires using MU which is a bit trickier to get set up than regular WordPress, which is tricky in itself! 


Yeah, call me  when  3.0  is ready!  I need  easy!

        

Don't you hate coming home from a conference with a stack of business cards?
And God forbid you lose a couple along the way....This is an idea that could really catch on! The MingleStick! 

Simplify your life and meet someone with ease.

It’s Simple! Two people connect with each other by pointing their MingleSticks and pressing one simple button. A connection is made within a split second! Lose the need for business cards, pen, paper and the hassle of it all.

Not sure what contact information is right for the occasion? The MingleStick allows you to decide later! Protect your privacy and have peace of mind knowing that your email address, phone number, mailing address will be given to the right people at the right time. MingleStick users socialize and safely connect with others without any risk.

Use your stick to meet anyone - friends, business associates, acquaintances and even complete strangers!

The MingleStick is sleek and small, so take it out of your pocket to make that connection wherever you go!

 

WHY DIDN'T  I  THINK  OF  THAT?!

MingleStick

        

ASHTON KUTCHER now has more followers on TWITTER , than CNN NEWS!

CHARTBEAT is  watching their numbers, live!

I really do not Twitter enough! 
But if you want to follow me, I am BlogStrategist.





blog consultant web 2.0 consultant twitter ashton kutcher business blogging gay travel Turbo Tagger

        

I was on my Facebook page today giving it a much needed update and answering some mails and what not. And I stumbled across a new app  from Darren Rowse!   Problogger  TV!

Of course,  unless you have been living under a rock the last 4 years, you know Darren Rowse is the author of Problogger.net, a website devoted to helping bloggers improve their presence online. 

You can Add this app  on Facebook, to get the latest articles and videoblogs from Darren.

Pretty cool!

        

Imagine...living and working in Australia for 6 months,

exploring the Great Barrier Reef.

And your job is to write, blog, photograph and tell the world about it!
That is what I hope to be doing this coming July!

Please  take  90  seconds and view my video and cast me a vote! 
This would be a dream job for us! Blogging from Australia!

VOTE FOR DERRICK SORLES!

Many thanks!

Derrick  and Michael

best job world great barrier reefaustralia queensland tourism derrick sorles web 2.0 expert Turbo Tagger

        

 

GoDaddy  ( Find, Buy & Sell Domain Names ) has been selling .info sites for $0.99 each for some time now.  And people started snatching them up! Because they could get exactly the keywords they wanted, that were already taken by .com domains. But now  it seems, Google has been flooded with useless, spammy websites as a result.

 

There has been a lot of rumors in the last week or so (and some  valid data) saying that Google has recently dropped MANY .info  sites from their rankings -- sending them from high rankings to  totally off the charts.

Not long ago Google's Matt Cutts said that Google does not differentiate between .com and .info domain names when it comes to ranking, but maybe that is no longer the case.

My personal advice on domains, and I may be wrong,  has always been to not register any  of the .info , .biz,  .tv names  and stick with .com names. You can usually add a word or two and come up with a domain that is very close. And with persistent work and keyword penetration, YOU WILL come up for your originally desired domain. We have done it - with several domains.

By the way, GoDaddy (Find, Buy & Sell Domain Names)  is STILL about the best place, I think, for domain purchases. You can still pick up a  blog for a year for $35 and your domain for $2! And you get 24/7  tech help - you can't get that with WordPress!

        

WOW -  What a journey this year has been! 

Actually, it's been an amazing 3 years. All of our lives we have been entrepreneurs, marketers and big internet users. About 3-4 years ago, we noticed a shift in the Internet. The explosion of Web 2.0 and Social Media. We decided it was worth exploring. We started dabbling with blogs and various Social Media groups and started having these “Ah-Ha!” moments! We discovered if we did certain things, we could get in top Google searches. If we belonged to certain groups, we could get free PR for what were doing. Our phone started ringing. People were finding our sites. Within time, we had a dozen sites and started consulting for others on how to build their web presence by using blogs and other tools that are widely available.


 I met Robert Hruzek, in 2007 thru   Liz Strauss's and Terry Starbucker's  brainchild, SOBCon  (which is an amazing event!) in Chicago.  Robert's site, is  Middle Zone Musings,

Middle Zone Musings is a comfortable place to stop, have a cup of coffee, swap a few stories and share practical ideas for the real world. "I don't ask for much, just a bit of your brain every now and then. Have a seat, take a load off, and relax... "  Well, last year he started something called  BLOGAPALOOZA. And this years  BLOGAPALOOZA  09 just wrapped up! 

All this month  he has been  posting collections of  What I Learned From 2008 ,  from various bloggers.  He has been cranking out the best of the best posts! Take some time and look  at all the great posts and great writers, inparting  great knowledge! People like Best of Mother Earth Karen Hanrahan,  Phil Gerbyshak, Sheila Glazov, Michael Snell and Terry Starbucker.

We have learned SO MUCH in the last 3 years, Michael  and I have invested over 10,000 hours, learning the best of the best of practices, SEO, SEM Content Attraction, importance of keyword and domain selection,  ....we made all the early mistakes...so YOU DON'T  HAVE  TO! And we try to pass on those tips here at our Business Blogging Tips.

My  WHAT I LEARNED FROM 2008  were a selection of posts that I thought shed light for newer bloggers.  Some of what we discovered over the year...things that helped us. 

  Robert runs 12 tips....if I had to pick only 3, they would be...

#1 mistake people make...June discussed the number one mistake people make - choosing a bad domain:
Domain Advice - Selection and Keywords are Crucial to Findability


Start your blog on the right foot!  In January we talked about optimizing your blog and blog posts for maximum search engine lift: OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOG - For Readers and Search Engines

November named 50 top Social Media worth exploring: FINDABILITY - 50 Social Media Sites That Every Business Needs to Know


Congratualtions Robert on a GREAT  event!

blogapalooza robert hruzek business blogging consultants derrick sorles michael snell middle zone musings Turbo Tagger