All-Seeing Digital Eyes by Neville Kattakayam ~ a Review

by MK French

In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, many people are not aware of how to protect themselves or their privacy online. This guide discusses the pros and cons of technology, without intending to sway the reader into making a particular decision about it. From his own admission, Neville Kattakayam wants "to give you relevant information, so that you could take intelligent decisions, about your privacy and security." Part One of the book relates to "Privacy," with ways to secure data on networks. Part Two is "Security," looking at ways to maintain etiquette and outline potential threats. Part Three is "Literacy," outlining tips to become more literate with social media tools to maintain a more positive experience. There is no question that the negative outcomes get airtime in the news, and the risk of cyberbullying and depression is present. This book seeks to mitigate that risk.

Get Twitter Insights with Commun.it

Social media can be very time consuming and sometimes confusing. Every user wants an easy way to manage their accounts most effectively. I've recently been checking out Commun.it to help manage my Twitter account.

One of the big questions Twitter users have is who to unfollow. This question often comes up when they are approaching the 2,000 following mark (Twitter has some limits to help eliminate spammers and keep their site running smoothly. See their Following Best Practices for more info). I use both Manageflitter.com and Who.Unfollowed.Me. Manageflitter provides info about who's not following you back, inactive accounts, fake accounts, and users that are "eggs". Who Unfollowed Me lets me quickly see who has recently unfollowed me and if I'm following them I can decide whether to continue or not. However, no priority or information about their engagement is provided. Commun.it prioritizes those who do not follow you. It shows how many people are following them and if they have engaged with you (retweeted, mentioned, or replied).

Commun.it provides you with more insight than just who to unfollow. They also recommend who to follow. These are people who are highly engaged as well as have great influence within your network. Again, the list is prioritized by influence and engagement.

I get a ton of emails daily, particularly during a giveaway, about new followers. Do I want to follow all of them back? If they are only following me for a contest, probably not. Commun.it will give you a list of recent followers, showing how many followers they have as well as the number of times they have engaged with you. Another cool feature is the generated tweet about who are your top new followers. This tweet can provide an opportunity to engage with your followers, start a conversation. People like recognition.

Another feature I have found useful is the "consider to reply". Do you participate in busy twitter chats? I was the special guest for one and though I tried my best to reply to everyone, tweets were flying. The next day I checked my mentions, but because I am part of Triberr some days I get a bunch of mentions. I went to Commun.it and looked at the list and sure enough there was a tweet I missed that asked about the services I offered. Haven't tweeted with someone in a while - Commun.it will recommend who you should re-engage with.

There are a number of other features. Oh and it's free (there are some limits, and of course, a paid option). They all give you important insight into your use, followers, and following on Twitter.

As I mentioned a moment ago, people like recognition. Commun.it will generate a tweet about who are your top supporters, top engagers, and top influencers each week. It is another great to engage with your followers. When the tweet goes out on my account it is almost always retweeted, favorited, or replied to, which in turns increases my influence.

As the saying goes: work smarter, not harder. To that end, I recommend Commun.it. I check the site once every week or two.

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the blogger behind Girl Who Reads and author of the how-to manual Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

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Tips on Thursday: LinkedIn

Nederlands: Linked In icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As bloggers, we are always looking for ways to increase our influence and make new contacts. While I've mentioned Facebook and Twitter as great tools for connecting with professionals and readers alike, LinkedIn can be a wonderful networking tool as well.

If you are not familiar LinkedIn, it is a professional networking site. Profiles are based largely on one's resume. Even, if you have a LinkedIn profile, you may not have thought about using it to promote your blog. Why would a hobby appear on a resume? While many of us may never pursue our blogging as a full-time career (or even one that pays in more than books), I think we treat it as more than a passing fancy. If you are reading my tips, you are probably pretty serious about this pursuit. So why not include it on your LinkedIn profile?

You may not want to list your blog on your official resume (unless you are apply for a job that requires strong writing or social media skills), including in on LinkedIn can help build your credibility amongst authors and publishers and well as promote your blog to possibly a different set of readers - those not actively seeking out book blogs.

Please note - as your profile can be viewed by others, including current and potential employers please consider any negative impact a personal blog may have on your career before including it on your LinkedIn profile.

I've seen different ways of listing your blog. Some people list themselves as Owner (I do) of their blog or as Reviewer. For those who are part of multi-author blogs, you may list yourself as contributing writer or if you have more responsibilities, you may consider yourself as an editor or administrator. You can write a description of your blog, including "services" you provide - guest posts, interviews, giveaways, etc. It can be a great (and FREE) way to advertise your blog to authors and publicists looking for blogs.

Features of LinkedIn:

In addition to providing a description of your blog on your profile, there are a couple of other features I find useful in promoting my blog and building my reputation in the publishing industry.

Status updates: You can provide status updates, much like you do on Facebook or Twitter (you can choose whether your updates are posted to Twitter). Remember LinkedIn is more of a professional network than social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Make your updates relevant to your connections. If your connections are from a variety of fields (they are not in publishing, your career field, etc.) they are probably following you because they are readers. A majority of my connections are other bloggers and publishing industry professionals. I do not update my LinkedIn status every time I post to my blog. I will update when I post a Tips on Thursday or a really great review/guest post.

Groups: The real benefit of LinkedIn for your blog are the groups. There are several groups dedicated to books, publishing, reviews, writing, marketing, and authors. It is in the groups where you can really make a name for yourself. Most of my referral traffic from LinkedIn is a result of participating in a group. I recommend checking in weekly to see what is being discussed and add comments when you have quality content to contribute. Also asking good questions and spurring discussion will increase your profile within the group. If you are looking for content to blog about besides book reviews, I find the topics discussed in the groups helpful in formulating new blog posts.

While there are many more groups for you to join, here are the ones I'm a member of to get you started:
Book Marketing
Book Publicity and Marketing
Book Publishing Professionals
Book Reviewers
BookExpo of America
Books and Writers
Independent Book Publishers Association
New Authors Need Marketing Ideas

Do you use LinkedIn to promote your blog? What have you found that works best? What groups do you participate in?

Disclaimer - This is not a career advice blog. Anyone wishing to use LinkedIn to promote their blog, should first check with your human resources department, other company policy setting group, or professional organization in your field to determine the appropriateness of including your personal blog on a professional networking profile. The above suggestions are intended to help promote your blog and Girl Who Reads cannot be held liable for any negative outcomes that may result in implementing said suggestions.

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Tips on Thursday: Traffic

Image via Wikipedia

Sorry this is so late. I'm on my church's communication team (because I know how to use social media) and the meeting went on forever last night. And then it was a super busy day at work. I mentioned a week or so ago that I joined a group of bloggers and authors who participate in a monthly event for self-pub/indie pub authors. We also support each other through out the month. The biggest way we do this is by sharing blog posts on our social media networks. We've been trying out several tools to help drive more traffic to our blogs. I thought I would do a quick overview of what is working for me.

Triberr - This is a free site that aggregates blog posts from the participating bloggers. You are part of a tribe (either you're invited to join one, ask to be invited to one, or create your own with friends). I know there are several author groups out there and I recommend you look into creating a tribe to support each others blogs. I belong to a tribe of around 50 people. You can choose which blogs are sent to your twitter feed and how often they are sent out. Most of the people in my tribe send out tweets every hour. There are also sharing buttons for facebook, StumbleUpon, and Google +. My monthly visitor count has now tripled since joining Triberr. You can belong to more than one tribe, but be careful if they are very active - you don't want your twitter followers thinking you are spamming them. While it has been a terrific site and easy to use, there is a CON - it is a free service and often "breaks" - either the feed doesn't update or the (more often) scheduled tweets do not go out.

StumbleUpon - Shortly after I joined the Triberr group they started a Stumble Wednesday. Now I had heard of StumbleUpon. I had briefly looked into it when a thread about it popped up at BookBlogs.ning.com, but the directions there seemed complicated. However, it is quite simple and is the number 1 referrer to my blog. While I know there are at least a few members of my tribe stumbling my post as well, I don't know if you necessarily need a group. I have a bookmarklet "Stumble This!" so I can stumble sites and blogs who don't have the social widget for it, but I highly recommend you add it with your other social media share buttons. Increased traffic to my blog on day 1.

Reddit - This tool can either be really good (it's the number 2 referrer for my blog) or really bad (they have a zero tolerance policy for spammers and it seems that it can be a bit arbitrary on who they ban). DO NOT POST MORE THAN ONE LINK A DAY. That seems to trigger an automatic ban. Another blogging friend was banned, couldn't figure out why from their TOS or get an explanation from Reddit. I recommend trying it out for your blog. Within a day or so of using it, I started seeing traffic come from Reddit.

Digg - This is the newest experiment. I haven't seen much in the way of traffic increase since starting to use it. We've just started this week, so I'm willing to continue to try it out. It's not difficult to do. I've added a "View on Dig" bookmarklet to my toolbar. I also have a Digg share button in the Sociable box on the sidebar of the blog.

There are my experiments with various traffic producing social media sites. What have you tried? What's working best for you?

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