Via my Twitter account today I ran across an article on Mashable about how you can ‘Measure’ a person’s influence online.  It was a good article, but what really stuck out to me was the comment the author, Micah Baldwin, said at the end:

…since Technorati’s Authority Rank stopped consistently updating (read: lost the trust of bloggers), there hasn’t been a single tool for measuring the potential online influence of an individual blogger. Until that happens, the best measure is getting recommendations from friends.  After all, there is nothing that will beat a simple recommendation for uncovering influential people both online and offline.

And I really couldn’t agree more with him. One of the things that I do anytime I need to know something is to reach out to others around me who I think might know the answer. If by chance they don’t, 9 out of 10 times they know someone who does. Plus contrary to what you might think, people really do like helping other people. Especially across the internet.

So in essence the measure of someone’s influence online or offline is dependent upon whether or not you ask them for help. So maybe you should take some time today to make someone influential.

SEO Plug-ins

• All-in-One SEO Pack – It seems like this is pretty much the industry standard for SEO plug-ins. It handles titles, meta, keywords, etc. And allows you to adjust them on each individual entry.
• Excerpt Editor – This will automatically create an excerpt from the post and/or page. This is important for any themes that use exceprts like Thesis. Excerpts help with SEO and minimizing duplicant content on archive pages.
• SEO Smart Links – This will automatically create contextual links within your content to either appropariate pages or to a list of keywords and pages that you create.

Social Networking Plug-ins

• Sociable – Best looking “share this” plug-in.
• Wordbook – post your blog updates onto your Facebook account.
• Twitter Tools – post a link to your recent blog post on your twitter account.

Content Plugins

• Post-Plugin Library and its accompanying plug-ins – This will allow you to post a list of recent posts, similar posts, and/ or popular posts at the end of your posts or pages. It also allows you to insert a list where you want it.
• Widget Logic – Controls which widgets show up where based on WP’s conditional tags.
• WP Greet Box – Show a message at the top of your page depending upon which site the user is coming from. Ask a Delicious user to add to their account, or a Google user to add to subscribe to your feed. This is similar to the “What would Seth Godin do” plug-in but better in my opinion.
• Zemanta – When you’re writing your posts, this plug-in sits next to the box and offers up images and links that you could link to. Drag and drop an image in or click to add links.

Administrative Plugins

• WP-CMS Post Control – This plugin allows you to hide unwanted items on your write pages for both posts and pages. Cleans things up a bit and keeps your writers, authors, etc. focused on the things you need them to fill out.  (Example: I hide everything except the SEO stuff they need to fill out.)
• Google XML Sitemaps – This will automaticaly build your sitemaps out for you and submit them to Google.

That’s my list of useful plug-ins. And I am always adding new ones and testing them out. They have to be easy to use, easy to set up and easy to understand.

What are some of the plug-ins that you’ve found most useful?

Not too long ago there was an article sent around work that talked about the increase in productivity if you use dual monitors. According to the article on Yahoo! Tech, the use of dual monitors will increase your productivity by 44%.  Digging further into the article it looks like the specific increase in productivity was found through a test conducted at the University of Utah.

In a study commissioned by the electronics company NEC, researchers at the University of Utah recently asked office workers to perform several common tasks using various monitor configurations. They found that people who used dual 20-inch monitors were 44 percent more productive at certain text-editing operations than people using a single 18-inch monitor. (Read the full New York Times Article)

More Monitors Mean More Work is Done

It wasn’t until I started working with Quicken Loans that I had personally experienced the use of dual monitors. When I first started I looked around with envy at my teammates who had the dual monitors. Low and behold all I had to do was ask, and my team leader hooked me up with dual monitors.  Boo-yah!

I will admit that the dual monitors are both a blessing and a pain. It is a blessing because when I have to do work that involves copy and pasting – it’s quicker. When I have to QA the website changes – I can open up both browsers and compare how the site looks in both browsers. If I’m digging into analytics – there is a spreadsheet open on one screen and an analytics program on another.  They help me get more done.

On the other hand though if I really need to dig in and focus – my email is always open asking me to read it.  Or a browser is open with all the crazy social nedualrking sites that I do my research on.  Oh and a big pet peeve, when I go from using the laptop to the dual monitors – the desktop is all messed up. Small aggravations compared to the benefits of dual monitors.

Should You Use Dual Monitors?

At the end of the day I give dual thumbs up to dual monitors. And I would high suggest you use dual monitors if you do any of the following tasks:

• ANY type of writing or copy editing.
• Build online advertising campaigns or paid search campaigns.
• Review websites for content, layout and/or usability.
• Programming of any sorts.
• Search engine optimization.

How about you? Do you use dual monitors? If so, what kind of tasks have you found that it helps you with?

1. Do your research: Think about who your audience is (personas), what actions you want them to take and how to most effectively persuade them to do so. Jot down a quick outline so that you have an idea how the article will be laid out. As far as ideas on what to write about, here are a few good places to go:
• Competitor Web sites – check out what they are writing about.
• News sites (CNN.com, MSNBC.com, etc.)
• Yahoo frontpage – this is great because it lets you know what is in the news today.
• Note: Make sure to grab the article name, author name and link so that you can properly site the source of your content.

2. Appeal to users’ emotion: Remember that people justify a purchase based on facts “it was on sale”, but make buying decisions based on their feelings “I’ve always dreamed of owning one”.

3. Voice: Talk to the reader/user as if you’re talking to them in person. Try to get into their shoes and think of what questions you would ask in their position. Avoid addressing the third person (he, they) whenever possible by using the second person voice (you). Though understand that sometimes it’s necessary to use the third person.

4. Create a solid, high-level opening paragraph: Give an overview of what the reader will learn and is written in a way that engages the reader to want to read further—like giving them the “what” without the “why” (that comes later in the article). Usually 2-3 sentences long.

5. Use good keywords:
• Research keywords using sites like Trellian and SeoTools. Pick one main keyword and two or three supporting keywords.
• Include keywords in titles (most important), headers, subheads, hyperlinks and body copy
• First and last paragraph should include your target keywords.
• Main keywords should be used 5-6 times for the first 200-300 words; 7-8 times within 400-500 words; add an additional keyword for every 50 words after that. (BUT don’t “overstuff the turkey” – making the writing unnatural with too many keyword placements).

6. Writing Titles: Titles should include keywords and be engaging in a way that prompts the user to click or read.
• See Copyblogger.com for tips on how to write effective headlines (and persuasive copy).
• “How to” and “list” headlines (“6 Ways to…”) are very good.
• Don’t forget your subheadlines too!

7. Meta Data: Meta data is not something that your reader will ever see, but it is a short description of the article that search engines read to know what the title of the article is, what the topic of the article is about and the keywords you have written about in the article. Make sure to always have the following:
• Page Title
• Meta Desciption
• Meta Keywords

8. Provide contextual links:
• Links must be highly relevant—don’t add links for the sake of adding links.
• If trying to generate revenue, make sure that the links make sense to include in the article and go to a top performing landing page.
• Open a new window with the link if you are linking off of your site.

9. Use relevant images: Try to include an image with your article, but always make sure that it is relevant to what you are writing about.  If promoting a product in an article (say, in a graphic “ad”), the product must relate to the article.  If you’re talking about the company, you can use the logo. Though if you borrow someone’s image, make sure to give the owner credit.

10. Close the article with a good summary: Paragraph should summarize on a high-level what the article was about and ALWAYS provide a call to action, a question or something to engage the read in conversation with you.

What is Twitter:

Directly from their home page, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

More About Twitter:

• It is referred to as micro-blogging and has a simple interface that allows you to answer that questions in 140 characters or less. – Keeps things short, sweet and to the point.
• You can follow people and be followed so that you can see the ‘updates’ of other people that you choose. – You see what you want to see.
• You can do your updates via cell phone, the website or other tools that the community has created. – Their open-source API has people creating great applications to work hand-in-hand with Twitter.

Why Should You Be on Twitter:

• Because it is a sesspool of information sharing.
• It is a way to share links to your sites and/or content.
• It is a way to get ideas and get feedback.
• It is a way to solve problems.
• It is a viral playground.

But don’t take my word for it. SearchEngineGuide.com author, Jennifer Laycock was asked, “If your goal is to grow a small business online, and you had time for only one social networking / social media site, which would you choose and why?”

Don’t worry though, if you don’t know the name then I’m positive you know his works. As a matter of fact you have probably hummed a song that he wrote. You see John Williams is a pretty famous composure and has written the film scores for some big blockbuster movies including Star Wars. Well, while cruising through the Twitterverse today I clicked on a link that @CharlieCurve posted that took me over to YouTube. Low and behold there was this incredible tribute. The song was written by a comedy troupe called Moosebutters, and this John Williams fan recorded the comedy trouble and made this cool video, “Star Wars” – an a cappella tribute to John Williams.

And I am completely stoked about it. It looks like there are three people from three major US cities, New York, Austin and Portland, who are going to be blogging on NerdAbout.com about anything geeky. Their tag line on the site says, “Nerd News. Arts, Events & Community. Thinking locally, geek globally.” Do you see that? Geek globally. I believe my little dizzy geek self just developed a website crush.

Don’t even get me started about the ninja action in flash.

From what I can see right now there isn’t a ton of content or information on the site, but they do have a Twitter account that I started to follow: http://twitter.com/nerdabout

And the image above shows the beginning of a Robot Quiz that they have on their site too. Did you know that the “Wakamaru” robot was created in Japan by the Mitsubishi company for companionship? I sure as heck didn’t know that. Seems a little bit odd to me, but whatever floats your boat. It did say though that it hasn’t been for sale since 2005.

Overall NerdAbout.com looks like it will be something I check back in on. I really do wish that they had some widgets though that you could grab. Maybe I will shoot them an email or a comment and let them know. Because that would be a great gadget to include in the sidebar of the Random category over here on DizzyGeek.

Or at least that’s what one of the article’s on the frontpage of Yahoo says today. Which doesn’t surprise me. Sure I’m in the internet business and might be slightly biased. But there have been plenty of talk over the past few years about how much marketing budgets have changed.

On top of articles in the media that have discussed this shift, I have also heard from agencies that handle many large corporate accounts that their ‘traditional’ media departments have experienced downsizing or layoffs over the past year. Where their ‘online’ media departments have remained stable or actually grown.

Pulled directly from the article, “Staying Power: 5 Careers with Bright Futures” on Yahoo:

“Online marketers, also called eMarketers or Internet advertisers, work in a lively business sector that changes every day. One of those changes, according to the BLS 2008-09 Occupational Outlook Handbook, is continued growth.”

So if you are looking for a new job, love technology, data and have some creative passion. Then you might want to consider looking into a career in Internet Marketing.

At first tonight my post was going to be why you should always patent your ideas. But while looking online for the gadget I saw in my dreams years ago, I came across this neat site, www.coolest-gadgets.com. Most importantly I came across the category that showed “conceptual gadgets”.

So of course I spent some time cruising through the pages to see what people had come up with. The picture on the page shows one item that I am sure that plenty of people who have lived with roommates would love: a shared refridgerator. The blog post claims that, “The Flatshare is one out of nine finalists in the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition.” And I can completely understand why. It’s a brilliant idea. You wouldn’t have to worry about people eating your food or leaving nasty things to rot in the fridge. It would be your personal ‘chill’ space. (Wonder if there are locks on the doors?)

Here are some other neat gadgets I found that people are thinking of:

• Water bottles made from paper- Save the planet and use recycled paper for water bottles.
• Microsoft Mobile Office Bus- For the office team that is on the go.
• Digital Post-it Notes- reusable post-its. Word.
• Ring ID- A handshake and you’ll never forget a name again.

Some of these are so neat that I’m curious – what kind of crazy ideas do you have?