I’ll  bet that when you are posting on Facebook  you’re not thinking about the millions of people who are also logged into Facebook. You know what its like you get caught up messaging your friends whilst updating your wall, or skimming through the Friendfeed. BUT you need to remember that amongst the many millions caught up in the Facebook phenomenon some are potential employers, business partners, real friends,work colleagues and more.

If you want to make sure that your Facebook account isn’t going to come back to haunt you, here are 5 Costly Facebook Mistakes  that you should avoid. 

1. Keep it Clean

Your uploaded picture should be neutral if not professional. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the picture is going to be boring, but keep provocative and cartoony pictures tucked away where the world cannot see them. Remember, as an employee or future employee you are carrying the name of whatever company you work for. Provocative pictures never look good, especially when you can run the risk of future clients seeing your profile as well. A rule of thumb is that provocative pictures are for private viewing only.

2. Good Manners Never Hurt Anyone
The wall on Facebook, can be used to openly display any thoughts, articles, or comments you may want to share. As tempting as what it may be don’t make the mistake of putting everything and anything on your wall. Remember common courtesy should considered. So…Don’t make plans with people through wall posts. Save personal plans for personal emails or phone calls. If you’ve been invited to an event and plan to go, send an email or text message straight to the person that invited you instead of announcing your plans and confirmation on your wall. Once again it pays to have good manners you because you never know who may be watching. 

3. To Share Or Not To Share – That Is The Question!
If you choose to make your profile visible to everyone, then it is imperative that you make safe choices. For instance, sharing personal information such as an interest in Sci Fi movies, Eating Pizza and Cats is okay. However, showing personal addresses, names of children or children’s pictures may not be a good idea, because you never know who is viewing your profile or even worse still why they are viewing your profile.

4. Guilty By Association 
Facebook is a Social Site and the theory is that your friends are like minded people who are  a reflection of yourself. So you need to be aware of what pictures your friends are posting particularly if you are one of the star attractions. If  your friends are posting pictures that can be considered ‘too sexy’ then it’s possible that employers will view you as a spitting image of your friends. While it is impossible to prevent all friends from posting pictures of their choice, it is possible to prevent who is allowed to see a person’s list of friends. Take advantage of the privacy settings that Facebook offers.

5. Two Is Twice As Much Fun
If you having difficulty in keeping your profile on Facebook professional at all times then the option of having two profiles is for you. Many people have two profiles keeping one profile strictly for personal friends and the other strictly for professional business networking and coworkers. A great way to use two profiles is to make sure everything on your personal profile is private, while your professional profile can remain public. 

However you use Facebook its important to realise that 20% of companies admit to checking social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in order to verify potential employees, and 24% of employees are hired based on their social networking site. So the next time you apply for a job, remember to check your Facebook account for any ticking bombs, because your future job could depend on it.

We hope this post has been useful. If you liked it share it with your friends or leave a comment. 

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In today’s modern society if you can’t catch a persons interest instantly with a great witty headline you run the risk of  loosing a sale or not gaining a friend or twitter follower.  Copywriters know how words can impact a message and grab a persons attention. To rise above the noise in this busy world you can’t afford to ignore the importance of using a little copy writing in your headlines. Its true that copy writing is a skill and takes time to learn… BUT that being said here are 3 Irresistable Catchy Headline Tips For Social Media properties.

1) Action, Excitement, Fun
Lights, camera,  action… You have to use active verbs in your headlines. Too many people use passive uninteresting verbs in their post titles and miss out on grabbing anyones attention.  People are attracted to exciting, fun titles. Active headlines inspire peoples emotive responses, while boring, passive ones invite the reader to visit someone else’s feed! Most dull and boring headlines can be transformed easily into action packed riveting headlines just by altering a couple of words. So the next time you are writing a headline make it exciting.

2) Keep It Real
Your headline should be a genuine preview of the actual content in the blog post, twitter post or facebook post. You have got to keep it real. Resist the urge to trick the reader into thinking that the content of the post is something it isn’t by using misleading or false headlines. Write authentic headlines that do relate to your copy. The first paragraph of your content should contain interesting sentances with an edge that compliment your catchy headline.  Remember you want your readers to come back and the best way to guarantee their return is to make their first experience enjoyable.  

3) The Three S’s – Short,  Sharp and Simple
Have you heard the expression less is more? Well when it comes to writing catchy headlines you don’t want to dull or tarnish your action packed interesting headline by using  too many words. Remember the  three  S’s – keep it Short,  Sharp and Simple. Look at your headline, take note of the number of words and evaluate what words if any can be replaced with a new singular word. Always take the time to thoroughly review your headlines.

We hope you have found this post useful. If you liked this post share it with your friends or leave a comment

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Wouldn’t it be great if someone could demystify the most popular Social Medias and tell you how and when to use it. Yep sounds like a great idea to me.  In fact this idea sounded so great that we at Social Traffic Espionage decided to just DO IT!

We gathered all the information you could possible wish to know about the popular social media sites and transformed this information into what we believe is the ultimate guide to Social Media  “The Social Traffic Intelligence Manuscript“.

It’s pages are jam packed with must have information. It reveals the basics of the most popular Social Medias, exposes their strengths and weakness’s, explains how you might use social media to generate FREE social traffic, market your product, promote your business or to just make a difference in the world by supporting causes like  saving the whales.

BUT WAIT!!! There is more… The ”Social Traffic Intelligence Manuscript” is FREE. Interested? You can grab your copy of the  ”Social Traffic Intelligence Manuscript”  by simply clicking here.

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Behind the scenes we have been involved in an awesome project. We had the privilege of interviewing 12 Social Media Experts; the movers and shakers in Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, YouTube, LinkedIn, Forums, Podcasting, Social Bookmarking, Blogging, MySpace, StumbleUpon and more!

Interested? Watch the video and stay tuned…

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MySpace has nearly 130 million users and massive amounts of  it’s site traffic each day is generated by messaging accounts.  In real figures MySpace estimates  that messaging accounts for nearly 20 percent of its site traffic. By entering into the mail category MySpace has the  potential to be the second largest mail provider in the U.S. and the fourth largest globally.

With so much at stake,  MySpace is  approaching the roll out with the utmost care and  plans to roll it out to all global users within the next couple of weeks.  We all know the type of  publicity a bad  product brings to a company and it is for this reason that the MySpace email will initially carry a beta tag.

Of course there will be lots of questions that MySpace users and others will have as they become aware of  the MySpace  email service.  We at Social Traffic  Espionage  thought it would be useful to reveal a couple of the more obvious aspects of the email service.  

 1.Vanity URLS
Dont panic MySpace have got this one covered.  For those MySpace users who have vanity URLs,  and hey nearly 70 percent of the network’s users do… They have reserved addresses with that user name @myspace.com.  However you are not locked in to this arrangement you also have the option of changing  the URL to get a different mail address in a one-time offer. While others can get a vanity URL when they sign up for e-mail.

2. Spam And Privacy 
The good news is that MySpace have promised users a spam free mail service.  They have given careful consideration to the  issues already faced when it comes to privacy and online safety.  MySpace mail service also has  a feature that allows users to only receive mail from their MySpace friends.

We look forward to hearing what you think about the  MySpace mail service. If you have enjoyed this post share it with your friends  or leave a comment.

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How do you share these great articles?  Facebook makes it easy… Just follow these  simple directions below and you will have your friends waiting on the edge of their seats  for your next article.

1. Click The Facebook Icon
You see  it here,  you see it there  – “The Facebook Icon”.  Most articles online  have a Facebook icon nearby.  Simply click on the icon and you will be automatically directed to sign into your Facebook account.  Once you have signed in just follow the prompts and a link to the article will appear.

2. Use A Note
Included in  the  row of icons under the ‘what’s on your mind?’ text box, there  is a link icon that looks like a note.  If you place the mouse over this icon the word link pops up.  Simply  highlight and copy the article  link you want to share, and then  click on the little link  icon.   Paste your link into the additional box that pops up  under the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box.  Click the attach button, complete the security check  and hit the share button.
    
3)The Direct Approach – Post It On A Friends Page 
Visit your friend’s  Facebook page.  Simply  highlight and copy the article  link you want to share, and then  click on the link  icon ( remember it looks like a little note).  Paste your link into the additional box that pops up  under the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box.  Click the attach button, complete the security check and hit the share button.

One more tip before we go. It’s  Facebook etiquette to write a comment in the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box that accompanies your link.

If you like this post share it with your friends,  or add a comment.

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1. Spam, Spam And More Spam

Ok so you have a blog and guess what,   you just added a post. Most people appreciate you informing them once, informing them twice is sure to get their attention but telling them more than  5 times  a day is just plain annoying and desperate. Keep an eye on your tweets and develop relationships with people instead of  annoying them.

2. Keep It Clean

Don’t swear… Swearing in tweets will get you unfollowed faster than you can hit the update button.

3 .  Tweet About How Many Followers You Have

It doesn’t matter how may Twitter  followers you have, its tacky to tweet about it. OK  we know its exciting to reach milestones but tweeting this information is  a big mistake. It sounds like you are bragging and indirectly sends out a challenge to people to unfollow you.

4.  Links, Links And Nothing But Links

We love clicking on links in Twitter, you can learn about really cool stuff , but we also like to know the topic of  link. It’s important to put some content with your link. You have got 140 characters, which is enough space to add a phrase or couple of words that indicate what the link is about.    

5.  It’s Called  Microblogging  For A Reason -  people!

Twitter is not an article writing social site.  A post on Twitter is  140 characters. It’s a limit, and should be respected. OK their might be an exceptional circumstance when  you need to send a tweet that is made up of two 140 character tweets, but this is the exception not the rule. Clogging up the Twittersphere with tweets that are 2 – 3 times more than the 140 characters  is self indulgent and will result in people choosing to unfollow you.

6.  Extreme Tweeting – It’s Not  A  Sport

Have you ever checked your twitter stream, only to find that one person has filled up an entire screen? Twitter is not a one person show. It’s about everybody contributing and developing relationships. Stop being a Twitter hog, don’t tweet 50 times a day and spread your tweets throughout the day.

7. Constantly Retweeting

You see an awesome quote and want to spread the word, so you retweet  it to your followers. Nothing wrong with that… Retweeting has it’s  place in the Twittersphere. Retweeting becomes a problem however when it’s the bulk of your tweets. Fellow twitterites don’t want to follow a person who is always regurgitating or  echoing other peoples thoughts and ideas. Make sure you mix in the retweets with you own ideas and thoughts otherwise you will have your followers hitting the unfollow button.

If you enjoyed this post, spread it around amongst your friends. If there is anything you would like to add leave us a comment, we would love to hear from you.

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Most people are familiar with the concept and layouts of  Facebook and twitter, LinkedIn however remains a mystery to most people. LinkedIn has a reputation for being a Social Media site for professionals but this reputation is old fashioned, today LinkedIn is  a legitimate business tool use by a wide variety of people and probably best described as  a social network for business opportunities. On LinkedIn, people don’t chat about music or what they did on Saturday night, but instead focus on opportunities and how the network can help you. And that’s a winning formula. Here are just some of the most common and productive uses of LinkedIn.

So, give us your attention please as Social Traffic Espionage  reveals 8 ways to you can use LinkedIn.  

1. Connect With and Find People.
By now you know that Social Media is all about developing relationships. LinkedIn is no different, it’s a great place to look for old friends, old business colleagues, former employers or employees. Simply do a LinkedIn search and you might be surprised who you know. Remember part of the way you develop relationships with people is by helping them. So don’t miss out on this great opportunity. You can use LinkedIn to promote others, link to with others, recommend other LinkedIn members and of course answer their questions.

2. Boost Your Business
What do all business’s want? Customers of course. So if you are a small or large business you want to generate more customers. LinkedIn can put connect you with those people who are interested in your products. It can increase your chances of hitting that big deal that puts your business exactly where you want to be.

3. Research Companies and Business’s
If you are looking for a specific business, wanting to discover business trends, find an expert in your field, or need to contact people for further information then LinkedIn is a great place to start. Using LinkedIn’s advanced search option you can quickly connected with the information you seek. Take the unknown out of a job interview by looking up the person interviewing you. Checking the LinkedIn profile of the person who will be interviewing you will give you some important information about their work experience, interests, education and more.

4. Get Free Publicity
LinkedIn can be used to generate publicity not only for your business but when you launch a new product. At times it can be difficult to contact media or top bloggers. But many of them have a LinkedIn profile, and you can contact them through the profile. You can get FREE targeted Social Media Traffic for your business by sending them a press release or a quick email letting them know about your business or product launch.

5. Find Your Dream Job
OK you have a job, but it’s not really what you want. LinkedIn can help! Join LinkedIn, put yourself out there, search for companies that are looking for people to fill the jobs that you are interested in and contact them. To assist in promoting yourself to potential employers create a LinkedIn profile that serves as a resume, use a vanity url for this and then send people the URL. Your dream job could be just one click away.

6. Check Out Potential Employees References
If you are going through the interview process you want to make sure you have all the information possible at your fingertips. You can find out additional information about an applicant by using LinkedIn to search for others who worked at the same company at the same time. This way you are able to do a thorough background check in seconds.

7. Get Advice.
Questions, questions we all have them. You can find answers to most of your business questions in LinkedIn. Simply ask a question using LinkedIn’s Answers feature and get some great answers. There are some great experts on LinkedIn, willing to answer your queries.

8. Brand Yourself
Your aim in business, should be to develop a brand. It doesn’t matter what your area of expertise is, you need to develop your own personal brand. You want people to know instantly who you are, and what you do when they hear your name? A strong presence on LinkedIn reinforces your brand. Make sure you include a link to your website from your profile.

If you liked this post, share it with your friends. Did we miss something? We would love to hear your comments

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Have you heard of twitter? No its not a noisy bird. Twitter is a Social Media Platform that is growing so fast that it has growing pains. If you are a newbie then you are going to need to learn the twitter basics. Here are 12 terrific twitter tips that will get you started.

1. A “tweet” is the name given to the 140 character message you create in response to the question twitter asks “What are you doing?”

2 Reply @ Symbol
Twitter has a every unique replying feature. Whenever a person’s name is preceded by a @ symbol, that means that the sentence (tweet) that follows is directed at them. So if you are using Twitter and you want to reply to someone, simply type @ and then their name, then type your message. If you don’t want to type the @ all the time you can simply click on the reply button which is to the right hand side of every tweet.

3. Direct messages – DM
You are sure to see the letters DM mentioned in tweets. This stands for Direct Message. Sending a DM is similar to sending an email to a person. A DM goes to your direct message inbox and only you can see your DMs. This is different to replies and regular tweets, they can be seen by your followers, but DMs are completely private. You use DM’s when you want to write something privately to someone, but more importantly, if you are writing something that your followers will not find interesting. We recommend using DMs if you are replying more than twice to someone.

4. Retweet (RT)
Twitter users retweet when they believe that a tweet that interests them will also interest their followers. The Retweet basically quotes a person’s tweet and gives them the credit for the tweet. Your Retweet should look like this RT @juliegaroni (tweet is here). There is a space betweeen the RT and @ symbol. People can see the Retweet and then choose to follow that person. Its like forwarding an email. By retweeting the tweet you increase that person’s exposure to the twitter community. For instance the person who made the original tweet may have only had 20 followers and therefore only 20 people would have seen the tweet. But if the person that is retweeting has 4000 followers then the original person has just reached 4000 additional people. Importantly retweeting promotes one of the ideals of the Twitter community…share someone else’s ideas, and they will share yours.

5. URL Shorteners
The 140 character limit of twitter can take a while to get used to… but it is the 140 characters that give twitter its potent power. You need to think carefully about what you are going to say and to say it in the shortest number of character’s. The twitter community is dynamic…people like to share articles and posts, and not just hear about your thoughts. Including links to news articles, websites, blogs and other external sources puts pressure on this 140 character limit. How do you include a messsage and a long url in 140 characters? The answer is to use url shorteners. There are endless sites that shorten urls, just do a google search and you will one that caters to your needs. We at Social Traffic Espionage recommend and use TinyURL.com.

6. Tweet Regularly
Make sure you tweet (post) regularly. This shows that you have an active presence, and you want to belong/participate in the twitter community.   People are more likely to connect with you if they believe that you are an active twitter user. 

7. Participate In The Twitter Community and Respond To People
Make sure to respond to people that ‘@’ or direct message you. This is just a matter of showing respect, if people are taking the time to message you, then you should respond.

8. Wefollow
Finding people to follow is easy when you use WeFollow. In our opinion, it is the best and most effective way of finding people to follow. How does it work? Basically Wefollow is a twitter directory that uses the tags people have given themselves. It is organized in a very user-friendly way to enable any twitter user to build a quality twitter network in a very short period of time.

9. Twitpic
A picture is worth a thousand words…everybody loves pictures. Twitpic is a twitter tool that allows you to share pictures with your followers. We recommend that you uncheck the box that tweets the picture automatically,since this can be annoying and you might not want it tweeted automatically. Twitpic is simple to use…upload a picture to Twitpic, copy the URL, write something about the picture in twitter, then paste the URL for your followers to see and hit the update button.

10. Hashtag (#)
Hashtags were designed to enhance the Twitter experience. They enable easy categorization of tweets for effective future searching. For instance if you are tweeting about Oprah, you simply insert a # before the word Oprah. Anyone who then searches hashtags.org or Twitter search, for #Oprah, will be shown your tweet as well as all tweets on the subject. Hashtags actually add a lot of fun to Twitter. One of the most popular hashtags you will come across in twitter is #Followfriday. This is one hashtag that you should use if you want to build strong relationships in the twitterverse. To particiapate in Followfriday you enter #Followfriday and then the @ symbol with the username of the person you want to recommend. So your tweet should look something like this…#Followfriday @juliegaroni @pauldaw.

11.Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is the most popular, and useful 3rd party Twitter application out there. If you can only install one Twitter application, Tweetdeck should be it. Tweetdeck automatically integrates a number of twitter features. Using Tweetdeck you can reply, DM, retweet, shorten a URL, and share a Twitpic without ever leaving Tweetdeck. The newest version also includes a cool feature that when replying to a tweet with a hashtag, the hashtag is automatically generated in your reply.

12. What is twitter search?
twitter search is a twitter tool that lets you see  who is talking about you and what they are saying.  You can only see your replies in twitter if someone starts off a tweet with ‘@(your twitter name)’ but sometimes people use ‘@’ in the middle of their tweet. For instance they might say  “thanks to @juliegaroni” instead of  @juliegaroni thanks”. The great thing about  twitter search, is that when you enter “@(your twitter name)”  into twitter search it helps you find tweets that contain your “@name”  anywhere in a tweet,  just not at the beginning.

We hope these tips have been useful. We encourage you to leave a comment about this post or ask us any twitter questions you might have.

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If you are an Internet marketer you will want to use FREE traffic for your business. This means that you will want to use Social Media. If there is one disadvantage to using Social Media it is that it can take lots and lots of time if you don’t know how to use it properly.

So how do you use Social Media efficiently? The first fact you need to come to grips with is that you can’t market on every Social Media site – there just isn’t enough time or hours in the day. 

If you want to market your product or business  using Social Media you need an efficient  time optimisation strategy.  Therefore it would make a whole lot of sense to include Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn  in your  time optimisation strategy.  Why? Because it’s only logical to make use of the 3 most popular Social Media sites;  Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. 

How much time should you spend using Social Media? The answer to this depends on your circumstances. Generally there is a relationship between how long marketers have been using Social Media and their weekly time commitment. Usually people just beginning with Social Media, spend about an  average of  two hours per week. However, those who have been using Social Media for a number of months spend about an  average  of 10 hours per week or a bit more than 1 hour a day.

What is the reason for the time difference between Social Media newbies and experts? It’s our opinion that the time spent is related to the people’s experiences. Those who are just starting are unsure of this Social Media buzz – does it really work? They are yet to taste success, but once they have made a sale or start to have success they realise the importance of Social Media and spend more time doing it.

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