Alternative Energy is a Hot Topic, Are you doing what you can to take advantage of it?

About a week ago I submitted a PDF to Digg and what do you know, it made it past the Bury Brigade.

The PDF did not just get a few Diggs, to made it all the way to the home page! What does this tell you?

If you are a Green Company you must be using this source of traffic. Get on board while you can, don’t let this fall out of your hands, it is too easy to get your message across by utilizing Digg and other social news voting sites.

Just this week every channel I click on had some form of Eco-Green programming.

Take action now. Open an account and become active on with other eco-friendly communities if you need a push with your environmental message. Digg is the place to be.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Tad Chef wrote a great post today over at Collective Thoughts

"Stop Steampunk SEO, Start Being Friendly to Your Peers" is about sharing and networking with your peers.

Stop by and take a look at some of the other Collective Thoughts team while you are there.

Don’t forget to read SEO 2.0 Tad has more great content on today’s SEO environment.

Have a great weekend!

The past two weeks have past very quickly, but now I have a exciting announcement to make about an new social media group.

I have been invited to join an amazing group of social media minds. The name is Collective Thoughts, and we’ll be featuring some of the greatest social media minds, including:

Andy Beard
Brian Wallace (aka nowsourcing)
Glen Allsopp (aka viperchill)
Mark Laymon (aka aglobalwarming)
Marty Weintraub (aka aimclear)
Rose Sylvia (aka flyingrose)
Shana Albert (aka thenanny 612)
Tadeusz Szewczyk (aka tad chef)
Tim Nash

Come check it out, and while you’re there, subscribe to the feed!

Brian was the first to post his story 7 Ways to Own Social Media Before it Owns You and Shana followed with Webmaster, stop being so AntiSocial!! 

I am  looking forward to my review on how social media marketing is similar to a fishing tournament. Hope you have already subscribed to our MyBlogLog community as well.

I thought I would write an amazing post with all my secrets to make it to the Digg homepage on your first try.

There is only one problem, most of the time getting to the Digg home page can be broken down into two parts, writing more content would be a waste of time right!

• Part one is important, you must write good content.
• Part two is almost as important, you now ask 299 friends to vote for you. Don’t take no for an answer!

There you have it, 300 ways to make it to the homepage on Digg. Now lets see how fast you can duplicate this grand scheme. Oh, and after you get buried to the bottom of the ocean, be sure to shout to the top diggers, they would love to hear from you. This will make you very popular.

Do you find yourself opening up and telling others your deepest, most shielded thoughts and feelings through blogging?

I was reading a very personal post last night, when I caught myself drifting back to a past life where I once attended a college that specialized in a particular type of medical training dealing with radiology. While attending this school, I took a few psychology classes. These psychology classes moved me so much I nearly changed my major. Then in the blink of an eye life happened and I ended up changing my entire direction in life. Although it has been over a decade, I am still very interested in psychology. As I look back I even wrote my high school thesis on hypnosis. So psychology in one way or another has been an interest for a very long time. But we will not go there today. Today we are looking at a form of persuasion through personal blogging.

Jumping to the present. On almost a daily occurrence I come across some very moving physiological writing about our environment that really draws out deep inspirational thoughts. One person’s blog that I read daily writes about his daily life and how he deals with small issues such as washing his car to the most earth shattering events in his life. Sometimes these blogs that I follow motivate with only a sentence or two, others transcribe every thought containing page after page in organized detail how to achieve a particular outcome. What they all have in common is that they blog about really personal information that some of their closest companions may never know. They do this knowing that they are gaining a rapport that is more motivating than any sales page could ever be.

What would someone from Classical Antiquity think of our world if they were to read our blogs?

Is bearing all to see the real secret of social behavior marketing?

Is letting others feel like they can crawl deep into ones mind a new doorway of persuasion?

Is this all old school marketing creeping into the Internet and becoming mainstream since blogging has now become mainstream?

Let me know by going to my Linked in page located at www.Mark-Laymon.com and give me the most inspirational review that you could possibly ever give.

PageRank, PageRank, PageRank
I Can Hear Horrified Calls From Here!

So tonight I see we have had a change of the Google PageRank. I have dreaded this was coming.

I am going to turn off my computer now. Call me next month when the coast is clear to come out.

Social Network Ice Breakers?

Many social networks offer their users some type of online ice breaker to meet other people in their system. If you are an A-list blogger close this window NOW!

• Yahoo Mash has their Mash Pets. These widgets allow you to introduce yourself into the community without being annoyingly in your face.
• Facebook has SuperPoke, Zombies, and Vampires, they are always in your face and are getting to be very annoying, even more annoying when someone like me starts to use them.
• Digg Also jumped into the game recently with Shouts. Digg Shouts are the ultimate in annoying people. More than one or two a day and you will get blocked.

The ice breaker of choice for me has been using Facebooks’ SuperPoke to throw Toilet Paper. It reminds me of long ago nights sneaking about looking for the teachers house. Oops I did not say that did I?

Many of my subscribers I have targeted specifically by using social network ice breakers. I use these ice breakers to pick out key people in the SEO industry with the intent of them seeing me and subscribing to my blog. Once they I believe that they are getting to know me I will go farther and pick off one by one to become closer and enter their inner circles. Once I have reached these inner circles asking for an interview or other such favors will be that much easier.

How can you regurgitate the online ice breaking process to your benefit?

Lets start with Facebook. Have you targeted other bloggers in your niche? I am talking about your A-list bloggers. The A-list bloggers in your niche are people that dominate Google Blog Search every time they write a post. Now add them as your friends and find out exactly what they are reading and searching for online. Once you know what they like, submit something that you think will get their attention, but do not run out and email them. Use something simple like a basic poke. If they poke back great they now are starting to know you. If they do not poke back not all is lost.

You should have at least 50 friends in your friends list for the next step. On Monday morning you are going to start with the top ten people you really want to know. They would have already added you as a friend, so they should have at least looked at your profile. Now you want them to keep coming back and reading at what you are writing. Go threw your list and Poke another ten each day till you have completed your list. While using this technique, you should have a few people that respond. These are going to be your best allies to writing reviews of your work, keep in contact with them. Once every few days poke back throw a sheep, do something to keep them interested. Then just before your next big announcement, contact them and let them know that you would like them to be the first to review your content. Since they are getting comfortable with you, most will be more than willing to write a desirable review.

But now that I have wrote this, the SEO industry is going to be spoiled, go find a niche that pays well too. Tomorrow I need to start working on my next list of bloggers to target…

Their is one side effect from doing this. I have met several people that I am now very privileged to now call friends. If you do not like people… well you would not have read this anyway.

Now it’s time for me to open a new batch of Toilet Paper!!!

I am so tired of the "Google PageRank This, Google PageRank That" articles that are everywhere online!

Today I realized I am avoiding many posts that talk about PageRank in the title. Look at this, even I am jumping on the band wagon and writing about them. The paid links debate is bad enough, but now that Google is taking value away from sites that are using what they give us, Andy Beard explains here so I am not going into details. Google is getting out of hand with the FUD. (Fear, uncertainty and doubt, a marketing or political strategy)

I would love to see a new Page Ranking System!

There are a few companies that rank sites online, but they all try to do more than just quality ranking. I would like to see one that only ranks sites and does not try to also be a search engine or a web directory.

I know there are a few coders that read this blog, how hard would it be for one of you to make a tracking system that is hard to game?

Facebook is now valued at $15 billion

According to the Wall Street Journal article, Microsoft has now "Inked a Deal with Facebook!"

"We are pleased to take our Microsoft partnership to the next level," said Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s chief revenue officer, in a press release.

Microsoft agreed to invest $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook Inc. that values the social-networking site at $15 billion.

The deal signed today is an expansion of that agreement and focuses on international versions of the Facebook service, which Facebook is now starting to open. A deal with Microsoft would allow Facebook to shift some of the burden of selling international display ads to its larger partner. Microsoft in recent years has built up a large online advertising sales force and has invested in technologies to broker advertising over the Web.

By the end of this year, Asia will account for 35% of the world’s social networking users, with 28% of users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 25% in North America, and 12% in the Caribbean and Latin America, according to research firm Datamonitor Plc.

I am surprised that the amount is so low and that the percentage was only a 1.6% stake.

Will this close out other bids for a larger share hold from Google?

Is it just the tone of your voice that separates them? Where is the line that is drawn with social news voting sites?

Everyday I receive more and more Shouts coming from my friends on Digg. StumbleUpon has its networks of voters too. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy reading nearly everything that I am sent, so don’t stop sending me posts to read. But is the line drawn between being a social media star that gets a vast majority of your posts to the top of the social news sites and a true social news whore just the tone in which you speak?

Just my thought of the day.