How to find out if someone is following you back on Twitter

I was trying to determine if one of my colleagues was following me back on Twitter and ran across Doesfollow.com.  Doesfollow offers a very simple interface that allows you to add Twitter handles to answer the question: Does _______ follow _____ ?

You just enter the twitter handles to get results like this:

There’s also a “funny” option for humorous and sarcastic responses.  This simple tool could be very helpful if you are looking into any Twitter user’s  specific connections.

I have gotten over Lady Gaga not following me back.  The President, @barackobama, does.

Originally posted at Joe Spake’s Weblog

If you like Flickr for archiving your photos and for exploring the work of other photographers, both amateur and professional, AND if you love Pinterest, here’s some good news.  Flickr has added a share button to share directly to Pinterest, and the deal struck between the company retains attribution for photos pinned.  AG Beat sums it up in this post.

If you aren’t familiar with sharing images from Flickr, here’s a short how to screencast:

Originally posted at Joe Spake’s Weblog

We are happy to have Patrick Healy contributing to the Social Web Learning Blog.  Patrick is a thought leader in business tech, an active blogger and networker; his posts are always useful and thought provoking.   His company, Phacient provides consulting for business.  Enjoy!  ~ Joe Spake

Recently, I’ve gotten a few questions from people who are looking to get into blogging but don’t know where to start. It can be a bit intimidating and overwhelming. I recommend that they start off by guest blogging,  if possible, so they can get their feet wet by just writing. After all, that’s what it’s all about, right? And while I can’t help you write, I can help you at least look like a pro – you’ll have to bring the brilliance. There are a few things you should do before submitting that first post though in order to make your life easier – as well as the lives of your readers. These are, in my opinion, basic staples that I’m surprised many people just don’t do. Read on, you’re probably missing at least one of these.

First things first

This is not a post to teach you how to set up a blog; this is about how to set up your appearance on a blog – and look like a pro doing it. Most blogs are not custom built – and although all of these would apply even if yours were – these tips apply particularly well for things like WordPress blogs which are the most popular blog platform on the web.

1. Fill out your user profile

Once some you have been asked to blog anywhere, the first thing that the site administrator will do is set you up a user account so they have someone to associate those posts with. Fill in as much info as you are comfortable with but there are a few items that are critical: email address, bio, and links to other places you live. You’ll notice that I have my business email, I list my Display Name as ‘Patrick Healy’ (not Pat, Patrick, or Patty Boy), and I have html in my ‘About Yourself’ along with links to other sites you can find me on. This also helps in terms of SEO and creating links back to my other sites through Google search but I digress.

2. Get a headshot

People want to put a face with the work. This should be a no brainer for most but you’d be surprised how many writers don’t have them up there. My opinion is that it should be professionally done – that’s just my preference. The image you use should be square in proportion and a good picture of yourself that you are happy to share. Don’t make it too big (50k in file size is plenty). You in your Halloween costume from last year or rocking the banana hammock while on vacation in the Riviera are not your best choices. It should look like what you’d put on your LinkedIn profile since you don’t know who will be reading your work and decide they want a gander of the author’s mug.

3. Set up a Gravatar

Once you have that headshot, you need to go to Gravatar (short for Global Avatar) and create an account. It takes five minutes and will follow you throughout your blogging life. Have you ever seen this image to the left in lieu of someone’s picture in a comment thread? These people did not set up a Gravatar. Many blogs will automatically check for a headshot by referencing the email address you list in your user profile on the site you are writing for. (see why it’s important to make sure you have an email address in your profile?) This is not just for authorship but also when you are commenting. I’ll get to that in a bit.

You can associate any number of email addresses with any number of pictures. So if you are blogging/commenting on a corporate level you can use an email address associated with your formal picture or go more casual if you are guest blogging/commenting on your favorite hobbyist site. Just keep them straight if you are going to use a less than professional photo.

4. Write a bio

When you read a good piece by an author, there should be a few sentences about them to give the reader an idea of who they are and what they do. This is also a great opportunity to make that reader fall in love with you a little more – maybe even enough to follow your writing regardless of where it appears. Of course you should have links to other places you write, your website(s), or any other place you would like to drive  people to connect with you. The site you are writing for should be fine with this. It’s the least they can do for you in exchange for your work.

I would also recommend writing a full bio highlighting any major accomplishments, your ideology, and maybe a few personal nuggets about yourself that will help readers identify with you. This could be about 500 words.  A bio like this would go on an author page not at the end of each post.

5. Collect your social links

You are probably on at least a few networks where you would like to encourage folks to connect with you like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn. Get a list of all of these links and determine which ones are appropriate to share with the audience of the site you are writing for.  Some sites, such as this one may have places in the user profile to put these links so that they show up at the end of each of your posts. This gives readers a quick and easy way of connecting with you once they have read your latest slice of brilliance. Who knows, your fans may become friends, which would be cool.

6. Sign up for commenting services

This isn’t really critical but it will make your life a bit easier when you need it so you can probably do it as the need arises. There are third party services that will actually manage the comments sections of a blog.  Popular ones include Disqus, LIvefyre, IntenseDebate, and there is even a rumor that Google will be getting in on this. These systems make it easier to comment and share those comments across several social networks. You will need to be signed in to them to take advantage of all of their features, hence why I am including this. It will also enable you to better connect with others that frequent the site and maybe even join conversations on other sites. Part of the reason for this is because you can link your social networks to them and sign in with any account you like. A few clicks and you are commenting without having to remember any additional passwords.

7. Subscribe to your post

This is one of the most important ones. If you write something that is good enough for people to comment on then you should at least be informed when they do to continue the conversation. Some blogs will notify the author when a comment is made on their work. Some require you to opt in. Some commenting systems (another reason  to like them) will inform you on behalf of the site. Still some will do none of this unless you have actually commented on the post so you may have to do something like leave a short initial comment or just keep checking back until someone finds what you said interesting enough to comment on and then respond. You want readers to know you are listening and responsive.  If they have questions or want to know if they can get a meeting with you, you’ll want to be listening.

When you have all of this done, the information can be pulled together pretty easily and displayed in a nice, neat author box where anyone can connect with you in just about any way they like:

If I were to update any of the information or images those changes would automatically update here in this box. No muss, no fuss.

What this means to your business

Whether you are guest blogger or writing on your own site(s),  you will want to look your best at all times. You are also, hopefully, writing for a reason. When you blog for business you are (or should be) showcasing your brainpower. Your brilliance will come through in your writing and when it does you should make it as easy as possible for someone to pull the trigger and reach out to you. Doing the above things will make you look more professional and serious about you business. You’ll also make their lives easier to do business with you by being more accessible and that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day.

By this point you probably noticed that there are not actually ten tips. That’s because I am leaving the last three slots for you, the readers, to decide. Add your favorite below in the comments and I will pick the three best to round out the top 10. What do you do as an author to get better noticed and help your readers to contact you?

-PH

Originally published on the Phacient Blog on April 10, 2012 written by Patrick Healy

We have read Patrick Healy’s blog posts at Phacient – for some time and think Social Web Learning readers will learn from him too.  Patrick advises small business people like doctors, lawyers, insurance agencies, restaurateurs, real estate brokers and accountants so we are confident that his information is valuable to us all.  Patrick has graciously agreed to allow us to re-posts his wisdom periodically so if you like his posts, please leave him a comment.

Enjoy,

Sheila Hensley

Reputation Management: Why It’s Sometimes Hard to Be You

I’ve gotta get this off my chest

I’ve been considering writing this post for some time but recently there were just too many reminders throughout the course of my day to not. I find reputation management not only critical to business today but also fascinating. I guess the whole thing started back in the fall when one of the folks on the RE BarCamp planning committee told me that someone reached out to him to warn him of “who he was dealing with”. As it turns out, there is another Patrick Healy in the New York real estate world. The gentleman told my colleague that he recently won a judgment against my brother involving a real estate deal. Besides the fact that my brother has nothing to do with any brokerage in New York State (or any other state for that matter), the time of that judgment would be some time around the middle of my brother’s senior year of college. He didn’t work during college. Clearly, this was not my brother and the person was mistaken. Nonetheless, he was still bashing me publically.

This is not the first time someone has mistaken me for someone else by name alone. For what it’s worth, I am not a Broadway critic for the New York Times nor am I an NBC San Diego reporter – two other people I tend to see when I get my daily Google Alerts. The problem is my name, Patrick Healy, is the Celtic equivalent of the American John Smith. At any given time, there are dozens of Patrick Healy’s in New York City alone. So the problem is, how does someone like me keep an eye on his reputation? As I mentioned, Google Alerts and Google Search aren’t much help to someone like me. I suppose I could get fancy with the Alert criteria and eliminate results involving The New York Times and NBC San Diego but if I did get a mention on either of these two fronts I would sure as heck want to know about it since they are huge.

Your reputation is YOURS

I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that just about everyone has a name twin. For that reason, reputation management has become more and more important. The world has gotten smaller with the help of the Internet. If you are thinking of doing business with someone or making a new hire, you’d be crazy not to do some recon on these folks. There are some popular services out there that make this pretty easy and they are free. Rapportive is one that was so smart that they recently were purchased by LinkedIn. Ironically, their blog is on the Posterous platform whom was just acquired by Twitter. Hopefully that link in the last sentence works in six months time. Twitter has some reputation management to do in the acquisitions department but I digress.

There are more specialized tools out there for example the Australian-based real estate reputation management service Real Satisfied. **Disclosure: I guest blog for Real Satisfied but have no financial interest in the firm.**  Reputation is really all you have in the real estate business so suffice to say there are lots of eyes on these guys. If someone is saying something good or bad about you, you want to know it and acknowledge it. Reputation is something that takes years to build up and can be ruined overnight. It is a valuable and delicate asset.

So back to my problem, how do I deal with this?

If I were writing this a year ago my answer would be “you can’t, you just control what is in your power to control and take it as it comes” but things, they are a changin’. Much like social search is changing the SEO game, it will also help with the reputation management game. Think about it, how did we check someone out in the past – other than run a credit report and criminal background check? So what if their credit score is 750 and they have no priors. How does that speak to them doing their job or fulfilling on their promises? We ask people we know whom we think could know that person. Networks like LinkedIn help out with that to a large extent in that we can look at recommendations on their profiles and see which contacts we have in common. Social Search will help that along immensely – particularly if you are not all that well connected on LinkedIn. The Patrick Healy that your friends have mentioned or had contact with will be the social results that come up vs. the fire hose that Google normally asks you to drink from.

I’m happy about this because I work hard on my reputation and look forward to it being easier come across that. Realistically, the only time you don’t want anyone to find accurate information about you is if you are an unsavory character hoping to pick up some good press off of someone else’s efforts. To all of them I say, “Good Luck” since at some point that all falls apart when you are asked to prove it. It’s easier to refute a negative piece of information than vice versa.

What does this mean to your business?

Although there is more work involved in managing the reputation of a brand or business than an individual but at least you know what you are working with. How many Cronin Phelan pubs are there in Queens, right? Even if it were called John’s Bar, there wouldn’t be more than one or two in a single city. So absolutely use Google Alerts and Google Search to keep tabs on your business. When you find good press, capture it (get permission of course) and publicize it. Work on your social network and make sure your customers and patrons ‘like’, +1, tweet, and talk about you whenever possible. All of this contributes to your organic SEO but, more importantly, also to your Social SEO.

Absolutely check out your potential business partners and new hires with the methods mentioned above. A word of caution when checking out people with common sounding names: take those results with a grain of salt. If you can find someone you know and trust that worked with this person then that’s your best bet. Blind references and recommendations are fairly unreliable so don’t bother with them. Do you have any techniques you use to manage your reputation or vet others’? I’d love to hear about them.

-PH

Originally published on the Phacient Blog on March 14, 2012 written by Patrick Healy

For a while last year it looked like we might lose  Delicious, the King of online bookmarking and my favorite curation tool, as owner Yahoo did some strategic re-arranging.  Delicious was bought by the founders of Youtube and is now rocking on as good as ever.

So what is Delicious?

Think about how you arrange files on your computer:  perhaps that MS Word document is filed in a sub-sub directory of my documents like  C:\….\MyDocuments\business\correspondence\john_smith_ltr.doc.  Delicious allows you to organize Internet content in the same way.   If you find a blog post you want to save, you simply paste the link into delicious, assign one or more keywords and the article is saved to a specific URL – for example:  http://delicious.com/joespake/socialmedia/  will take you to the articles I think are interesting enough to save.  There are lots of possibilities for sharing with this simple format, and as a bonus, Delicious lets you generate an RSS feed for the sub-directory.  Wanna subscribe to my social media saves? just go to http://www.delicious.com/v2/rss/joespake/socialmedia.   Watch this screencast to see how easy Delicious is to use.

And what does curation do for me?

Having significant information at your fingertips is important if you blog, speak, or are in any situation where you would want to share information.  You can use your curated items to archive your great work or the great work of others, and you can use the keywords to drill down to the most specific levels.  If you are selling Xwidgets as part of your inventory, you might have a keyword for Xwidgets where you curate the latest and greatest articles from the Web on that topic.  You could just forward the link (like my link above) to get your customer up to date and establish yourself as an expert.

The old saying “a picture’s worth 1000 words,”  has held true through the ages, yet many small business don’t see the real value of publishing pictures of their products and services.  Whether it’s a cleaning service, custom manufacturer, realtor, or provider of very specialized services, a picture of what you do, make or sell is almost always more appealing and memorable that a paragraph or more of descriptions.

Seeing what happens in a cotton gin is more interesting than reading about it

Flickr is the best online photo management and sharing application; and it’s free.  You can also upload videos and manage them in the same way as your photos.  Google has a long way to go with their photo system to catch up, but that’ a topic for another post.  I will leave it to you to explore Flickr’s simple interface.  You may even want to upgrade to the PRO version as you become a heavy user.  You can even make all your images private, and still use all the great Flickr management tools.

For me, Flickr’s best feature is Sharing.  Not only can you share individual pictures, galleries or slide shows to the major social media platforms but you can post directly to your blog/website, directly from Flickr. Simply link to your favorite blogging platform, Blogger, WordPress, etc. in the options, the locate a photo you want to add, and one click posts on the blog of your choice.  I seldom have to do anything with my Memphis photoblog,  except add keywords.  Posts come straight from Flickr.  Here’s an example  photo post to this blog.

This quick screencast will give you an idea of how easy this process is.

Whether you are a business person or an individual proud of your photography, a photo blog is a very effective way to showcase your work  and get your message out there in a visual medium; and Flickr makes the process a breeze.

Related articles

• Adding A Flickr Slideshow To Your Blog (everything.typepad.com)
• Quick & Easy Flickr Integration For Your WordPress Blog (pressography.com)