Although the service is free, it is still really buggy. I have to update my profile page many times in order to get it right. There seem to have some cache issues in their system. As you can see, you can simply link to many of your online profile, social networks and upload your own background image, which I’ve post on my HDR Cozumel Beach.

My purpose of using this service is to basically gain extra exposures. You know how important exposure is to the website. So this is definitely a great place to so. The catch is that you will have to spread the word out, otherwise, no one will know the page exist. You can find the page at About.me/Terence.Chang.

I recently also started implementing a trick to broadcast my message cross many network. I primary use my Facebook fanpage as the central broadcasting system to accomplish. In few weeks I will be able to tell if it is an effective ways to get more backlinks to me or simply a waste of time.

This is how thing works basically. If I have something to share, I will just post to my Facebook fanpage. The message will then be published to Twitter. The message will also be broadcasted through the Facebook RSS Feed to Hootsuite and then to Ping.fm. Eventually, Ping.fm will take care of the broadcasting. It will deliver the message to blogger, wordpress, tumblr, plurk and even LinkedIn.

The problem with this method is that the duplicate messages are distributed to many webpages and they may simply annoy some people who already follow you on many different places. I can see that some friends just decided to unfollow me. Well. that is the price I have to pay for. I will continue to test this for few more weeks and see if it is worth to continue. You are using this method at your own risk.

The beauty of this process is that it’s all automatically done for you. Once you setup the process, you can just post whatever you want on your Facebook fanpage.

If this method is working, I will apply it to my niche directory websites. Only time will tell.

BTW, if you haven’t use Hootsuite to manage your social media, you are wasting a lot of time. I use hootsuite to manage all my twitter, and Facebook account. I have more than 100 fanpage to manage. Hootsuite is the only tools that do the work.

First of all, if you are not a fan of my blog, please click on the LIKE button below the big header banner. You will see the invisible Facebook fanpage in action.

If you haven’t read my post about Facebook Fanpage Secret – Part 1, you can read that here.

I have been getting messages on Facebook asking me about the reasons to use invisible Facebook fanpage after I post Part 1 of the secrets.

The short answer is:  Control.

The longer answer is:  Drive traffic to your website and covert your visitors from Facebook on your website.

In part 1, I showed two examples of using invisible Facebook fanpage. Once shows the Facebook social search result of my blog posts. The other one shoes how local businesses were found on Facebook social search. Both search result will lead the visitors to the website directly. In other words, it potentially generates organic search result from Facebook to your website.

Still not sure about invisible Facebook fanpage?

Since every third-party page can be treated as Facebook fanpage, you can simply use that on your Facebook profile as the place you work. For example, I can add the fanpage of my blog as the place I currently work.

As you can see, I am currently working as Lifestyle Entrepreneur at Healthy & Wealthy Living. With one click, it will take the visitor to my website directly. As long as the website is registered on Facebook social search and you are a fan of the page, you can add the page as your work place.

Let’s cut to the chase. How did I add my site to Facebook social search?

The answer is OPEN GRAPH. Open Graph protocol is created by Facebook for one reason only. It will simplify social interaction using the world larges social network database. Open graph contains few lines of meta tag in HTML header. It allows Facebook to understand what the page is all about.

Since Bing.com is the driving force behind Facebook’s social search, you can imaging the new Facebook search engine optimization war is inevitable. If you are not in the game, you are way behind your competitors.

What do you need to add open graph to your website?

• A WordPress blog hosted on your own server with your own domain. (Do not user WordPress.com)
• Basic Knowledge about HTML
• A Facebook account to administrate your invisible fanpages
• The actually process is very simple.
• You add a wordpress plugin to your WordPress Blog.
• You enable the plugin and setup the plugin
• You LIKE your own page
• You invite your friends to LIKE it
• You manage your own invisible Facebook fanpage

Step 1: Go to your WordPress plugin section and search for “LIKE” plugin by Bottomless. Install the plugin and activate the plugin.

Step 2: Go to LIKE Button Plugin setting page under “Settings” section. Follow the instruction and configure your own LIKE button. The most important thing is to enter your Facebook profile ID.

The easiest way to find your profile ID is to go to one of your Facebook Photo album. Click on one of the album. It will show your profile ID in the browser’s address bar.

For example: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=[Your profile ID]&aid=####

If you have more than a dozen invisible Facebook fanpage, you will need an APP ID to manage your pages programmably.

Now your blog post will look like this. I choose to show LIKE button on top of blog post and below the title.

Now you can start inviting your friends and reader to like your blog post. You can also like your own blog post to speed up the process. Once it’s LIKED, you can instantly search for in on Facebook Search box.

How to check if the LIKE button is setup correctly?

If anything goes wrong, you should try to copy your blog post URL to the following tools and see if it turns out right. Visit LINTER tool on Facebook.

In part 3: I will cover how to actually use invisible Facebook fanpage to engage with your fans! So stay tune.

I will very much appreciate your help, if you haven’t LIKED my blog! Look for the following icon below the header image and kindly LIKE my blog.

Thank you very much! Hope you enjoy the reading.

[Update]

The secret of invisible Facebook fanpage : Part 2 : Open Graph

Really? Is there a hidden or invisible fanpage on Facebook? Do they really exist? Why should we use invisible fanpage?

There is no doubt that Facebook is now the #1 most visited single domain website on the Internet. People not only have one or more personal profiles, they also have more than one fanpages.

I am currently conducting an experiment using the hidden/invisible fanpage to engage with fans and drive traffic from Facebook to my websites.

What?

Yes. You heard it right. The purpose of using invisible fanpage is to drive traffic to the external website. In theory, it is the greatest tool to monetize the traffic from the largest social network for affiliate marketing, company promotion, new blog post notification and engaging with your fans OUTSIDE of Facebook.

For example, when you like this blog (click on the LIKE button at top of the page below the huge banner), you will become a fan of my hidden/invisible fanpage. Regardless what fanpage you have on Facebook, the first thing you will do after creating your fanpage is to invite people to become your fan by Liking your page! There is no difference to the invisible fanpage. I call it invisible or hidden fanpage, because they are not visible to anyone on Facebook other than the admin of the page. In other words, you can’t see the fanpage’s wall, photos or discussion. All you see is the destination page on the external website. You do, however, see the fanpage update on your news stream on your wall.

Ever since Facebook implement “LIKE” button and Fanpage, millions and millions people and website use it every day, but only few people knows the secret of invisible fanpage.

Here are the main types of fanpage on Facebook. You can create your own fanpage here!

• Local Business or Place
• Company, Organization or Institution
• Brand or Product
• Artist, Band or Public Figure
• Entertainment
• Cause or Topic

All these pages are created and listed on Facebook for everyone to become fan and to post and receive updates. However, there are fanpages that are NOT visible to anyone other than the admin of the page. That’s why I called it invisible fanpage. When someone search the page on Facebook search box, it leads the user to an external website with one click.

In the above image, all the pages link to individual blog post on my blog. They are also searchable on Facebook. Isn’t that cool? This is what Facebook called “Social Search“!

Many large local business directories are also implementing the tactic to get extra exposures and FREE organic search traffic for their listed customers. As you can see, except the first result linking to business fanpage, everyone of the page is linking to external website. It includes the #1 local promotions website at SmartLocalShoppers.com, AOL’s Citysearch.com, Yelp.com, and Verizon’s Superpages.com. The example is endless.

In reality, you can optimize your page title, image and description on your blog and make it searchable on Facebook. You can dominate your own niche with this tactics. For smart affiliate marketers, this can be a great way to drive the social search traffic to their product pages and monetize it.

Here is the beauty of using Facebook Social Search!

The more people like the page, the more people will find it.

Here is the secret!

Adding  Facebook LIKE button on your website is easy, but it doesn’t do any good other than showing how many people like your webpage. It only costs visitor less than 5 seconds and one click to become your fan. It’s like a one time deal. Get it and forget it. So what’s the good use of invisible fanpage?

The power of social network rely on user interaction and engagement. Without engaging with your fans, they won’t come back to your fanpage or website. So the capability of updating your fanpage wall is the key! In other words, you need to post new messages or updates on your invisible fanpage wall, so they will show up on your fan’s news stream. They can share and comment to your fanpage update and their friends will have chance to see it and LIKE it too.

So you may wonder why you don’t have access to your invisible fanpage after implementing Facebook LIKE button on your webpage? Here is the answer.

If you only add the Facebook like button on your webpage, it will NOT give you the access to your own invisible fanpage. You need to add extra component on your webpage.

Here comes the open graph!

With few lines of meta data on your website, it enables your website for social search. It adds your webpage and site to the huge and rapidly growing social graph database.

It looks like this on my blog.

<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”my profile ID” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://www.terencechang.com/images/me/pic000.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Living The Dream Lifestyle” />
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Healthy &amp; Wealthy Living” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.terencechang.com/” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”blog” />

With this extra meta information in your webpage HTML code, your webpage will be added to Facebook social search database. Facebook will also create a hidden and invisible fanpage linking to your webpage for you and add you as admin automatically, when the first person click on “LIKE” on your webpage.

The invisible fanpage looks like this for my blog.

When you post an update on your fanpage wall as admin, all your fans will see the message on their news stream under their profile. Isn’t that cool?

Here is how it looks like when I post a new update and see that on my news stream.

In the part 2, I will cover how to add the meta information automatically on your WordPress blog or website. Feel free to share and retweet this post, so more people will learn about it.

Remember to LIKE my blog and this page to receive the notification when the part 2 is published.

Recently, I discovered one of my web project build on top of CodeIgniter is having issues with duplicate page views. It only happens to FireFox and Google Chrome browser. It looks just find on IE, Opera and Safari browser. So I keep researching and researching and finally found out that Facebook Social Plugin is hitting the page after the initial page load from the browser triggered by the end user.

I am not sure why it doesn’t happen to browsers other than FireFox and Google Chrome. There has to be a way to prevent this from screwing up my page view counter.

The project is currently using CodeIgniter as PHP framework. So I have a SQL query to add one page view when user view the page. Now the query was execute twice every time the page is loaded. After removing components on the page, I found out Facebook LIKE social plugin is the one that causes the duplicate page load. I guess Facebook is constantly loading the page and see if the social graph information is updated.

In the Apache access log, I found there is a non-browser and non-robot user agent that hit the page. It looks like this.

facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)

If you look at the Facebook’s externalhit user agent text page, it says this.

Why does Facebook appear in my server logs?

Facebook allows its users to send links to interesting web content to other Facebook users. Part of how this works on the Facebook system involves the temporary display of certain images or details related to the web content, such as the title of the webpage or the embed tag of a video. Our system retrieves this information only after a user provides us with a link. You may have found this page because a Facebook user sent a link from your website to other Facebook users. If you have any questions or concerns about any links or content sent by one of our users, please contact us at legal@facebook.com.

The only way to distinguish this agent is to use user_agent class and $this->agent->is_browser() function. In the case, I won’t update the page view counter to and also to prevent other robots from generating duplicate page view.

Problem solved!

Image Source: Fast Approach To The Corkscrew by StuSeeger

Many people like blog contest! The happiest blog in the world is no exception. They will be giving away 4000 entrecards points and free ad space to the winner on July 5th 2008. The rules seem to be very simple. You can read more about that below. Personally, entrecard has been driving OK traffic to this blog in the past. With 4000 entrecard points, you can pretty much get on some of the high profile blogs.

Here are the detail of the blog contest.

The happiest blog in the world is giving away – 4000 Entrecard points. The biggest entrecard give away on the blog. The winner will get 4000 entrecard points and free 125×125 ad space for 1 months. The winner will also possibly be featured as one of the happy blogger on the happiest blog on earth. The rules are as simple as dropping your cards and leaving your comments on the contest post at “Giving away 4000 entrecard points and free ads – Great contest begin!”

Why you should join the biggest contest on the happiest blog in the world?

The happiest blog in the world is a fast growing blog with everything about smiles and help people finding happiness and be happy.

What’s the catch?

It is possible to have more than 1 winners! The happiest blog currently have 4100 entrecard points and 3 free ad space. In the next few weeks before July 15th, if they get extra 4000 entrecard points, they will have more than 8000 entrecard points. They will be able to pick the second winner.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Can you win the contest and 4000 entrecard points?

Image Source: slayer live @ singapore by notsogoodphotography

Just few days ago, I post my third weekend confession about Weekend Confession – Enjoy life with pretty models. I decided to join the local event and to social with the local entrepreneurs and business owners. I was so amazed by the Twitter power that Darren at ProBlogger created. You can read my post at Twitter – The powerful social networking tool – Are you following me?

Are you a socialpreneur?

I realized that social network is very important for my business. I need to spend some time to get my name and business out to the public. Online social network is not enough. Offline social network is actually more powerful way to get your name out. In the past two days, I attend two local events that totally make me very happy. I think the socialpreneur term will become a big word on this blog in the near future.

Yesterday, I attended the club entrepreneur network in my local city. There were about 50 people attending the event. Many of them have been with the local chapter for over a year. So they pretty much know each others very well. Many of them are already doing business together or with the partnership since they join the group. I was one of the new faces. It’s my first time to attend meeting like this. Some of the attendees are already an entrepreneur, who owns many successful businesses. So it gives a great chance to listen and learn what other people are doing, how they do and how they become success.

I was very luck to be picked from 20+ new faces as the guest speaker to introduce myself and my business. WOW. I got many hand shakes after that. We exchanged business cards. It’s amazing that the diversity of business out there. I got at least three people interested in talking to me further about what I can offer them with my IT background.

Today, I also attend the PayPal Developer Conference. I met one gentleman that I met last night at the club e network. He approached me and started asking me some questions. I simply answered his questions in few sentences. Now I have become his e-commerce consultant for his online stores.

Well. It all sounds easy to just reach out to people who I don’t know. Actually, I was turned down by some of the folks in the meeting. They probably are not interested what I do. Anyway, I have learned so much in the past two days that social network is as important as the quality of your product.

Here are 10 things that I do to get attention from the people I met.

1. Listening – The first impression is very important when you meet new people. I always stand next to the crowd and listening to their conversation. I don’t get involved with their conversation or interrupt them unless I am so sure about it. Avoid saying something stupid to destroy their first impression about you.
2. Eye contact – One thing to get their attention is to look right into their eyes, even they are talking to other person. By staring at them, you are making them aware of your existent. In few seconds, they will turn their head and look at you. You repeat this process to each person in the crowd one at a time until every one knowing you are there. It works very well for me.
3. Firm hand shake – A firm hand shake will make them aware your strong intention
4. Ask question about them - Don’t ever start telling the world about you until they ask. Ask question about what they do before telling them what you do. It actually give you chance to know if they are your competitors or allies.
5. Face the crowd – when talking to people, try to face the crowd. There are people in other group, who are staring at other group and thinking to switch conversation. You are giving them the chance to join your conversation.
6. Answer question in short sentence – Make your answer short, so they came ask you more questions. Don’t answer something they don’t ask. You don’t want to make people lost interest with your junkie talk.
7. Encourage them – Always say something like “That’s great idea!” or “WOW! That will make a big hit!” It costs you nothing to say something and make people feel good.
8. Make fun of yourself for your introduction – People don’t always remember your name, but they will remember your nickname or your funny introduction. Make a little fun about your name or business will make your image burned into their brain. That always works for me.
9. Make announcement of you departure before the end of the event – Make sure everyone is aware of your existent. Announce that you were having fun with the event before every one leave. So they remember you!
10. Remember the faces – Just like the #8. People don’t remember your name, but they remember your looking and what you do. Try to remember what they do with what they wear and how they look together, if you don’t remember their name. When it comes to the time to talk with them, you can give them a great impression by telling them you have a friend in the legal industry or you are trying to learn how to become a pilot, for example.

What do you do to get attention in the crowd? Share your socialpreneur tips and tricks with us!

Image Source: conversations by b_d_solis

Are you following me on Twitter? If you have not tried Twitter, you are missing some great opportunities to communicate with your potential readers or even with some high profile bloggers such as Darren from ProBlogger.net and Maki from DoshDosh.com and many other great talented bloggers. I can’t list them all. So Darren has been very active on the Twitter. You can follow Darren here and Maki here.

Darren was very kind of asking his follower to send him their best blog post with the eye catching title. I have one of mine list on ProBlogger too. You can see the one in Red.

I actually was on Twitter for a long long time, but I was not very active until recently following few big bloggers. Why is Twitter important to me now? Are you tired of been stumbling so many web site and still not find something you really want to read? Are you tired of searching on Google and social bookmarking sites? I have good reasons that you should use Twitter.

Before I get into the points, I have to say that if you are not using Twitter properly, you may be wasting your time chatting. It’s a great tool, but it’s also a tool to waste your valuable time. In most of the cases, I am following the conversation and listening to what people are saying.

My reason to use Twitter:

1. High profile blogges always post the must read posts on Twitter. So you don’t have to find them yourself.
2. You can use twitterFeed to send your newest post to your follower.
3. You get to see some inside conversation between high profile bloggers.
4. I can meet with different people from all over the world. Some of them are very rich and famous.

I am going to go through the following 116 twitter and follow them. Are you following me too?

So here are the 116 submissions (where people submitted more than one I’ve only included the first) that I received from my Twitter followers. Surf them – link up to those you connect with and if you’re on Twitter follow as many of this great bunch of bloggers as you can!

1. Twit from PHP with cURL by @tosoAplos
2. Phase One: In which we rickroll a desk – by @CleverUserName
3. Stu Talk #1 – Practical Community Identity by @theunguru
4. Being (Online) Social by @radix33
5. Dude Broke His Foot by @dwendland
6. Vintage Slug Advertising by @neonbubble
7. A Salty Chocolate Bar by @wildhoney
8. Save the Developers! Upgrade Your Browser by @idesignstudios
9. Creating Stop Signs for Site Traffic – by @jasonboom
10. Terms of Use – Are they Pointless by @aflusche
11. 4 Ways to Kick Your Blog in the Butt by @GrantGriffiths
12. Meeting God at Wells by @pastorshawna
13. Are you ready to take off or to land? Be the pilot of your business plane! by @terencechang
14. The Importance of a Day Off by @10kthings
15. St. Palm Patrick’s Sunday by @coffeesister
16. Change the Rules, Then Cross the Street by @jacobm
17. 10 diet friendly snacks that satisfy your need for sweet by @afexion
18. How Do You Facebook? by@davidgiesberg
19. If You Do Not Comment On This Post You Fail At Life by @UniKid
20. Getting people to read your blog i.e. Linkbait by @nickclarson
21. Real commitment or lipstick on a pig? by @trib
22. Do You Have Secret Business Syndrome? by @bigbrightbulb
23. Hate Destroys the Hater by @jnbammer
24. 17 Habits of Highly Popular Bloggers by @skinner
25. Terrorism – Why aren’t you afraid yet? by @koreyk
26. Winos have smaller brainos by @deege
27. Colorful Cardamom Roasted Cauliflower by @Sundaydinner
28. And oh, BY THE WAY… by @ericablonde
29. Start Spreading the News, I’m Leaving in May by @rhyswynne
30. You are not where you think you are! by @gCaptain
31. Taking Criticism: Are You A Dinosaur by @SHurleyHall
32. Oops, I did it again: bubbles, balls and burn-out by @jonathanfields
33. Fuel Cell Cars :: ride into the future by @cdhinton
34. Go Go Gadget Ads by Doubleohd
35. Right Off! by @GoonSquadSarah
36. Beyond Blogs: The Conversation Has Moved Into The Flow by @stoweboyd
37. How We Got A $1608 Cash Back Rebate Check by @bargainr
38. Adobe Photoshop Express & The Mindless Photo Rights Grab by @jimgoldstein
39. Stallion Battalion by @splitbrain
40. Last Meal In Singapore by @texasag90
41. #176 Nahin Saab, Kuch Nahin Bachta… by @dybydx
42. No Hype But Some People Should Probably Read This by @AndyBeard
43. Wallet Mouth? How You Spend Speaks To How You Want To Be Seen by @SCartierLiebel
44. adopt/adapt/apply by @dydimustk
45. Holding Hands is CHILD ABUSE! by @thepsychoexwife
46. Hard Lessons for Entrepreneurs by @sbpalding
47. Take great photos with a point and shoot! by @sduffyphotos
48. 13 Ways to Move Big Files on the Web by @charpolanosky
49. Why Not Be A Tiny Cocktail Sausage? by @anneplamore
50. Don’t Drive Angry: Stepping Back from a Failed Internet Marketing Campaign by @portentint
51. Jamaican Me Crazy! by @theblanchard
52. Wardrobe Essentials For College Girls by @collegefashion
53. Online Storage – MediaMax’s High Tech Extortion by @MadLid
54. Apple Is a Mean, Hot, Devil-Woman by @MattJMcD
55. London breaks with theatre show and hotel by @aroberts
56. 60% of Photoshop Users are PIRATES! by @auer1816
57. The 007 Twister by @OldManMusings
58. Ahhh… Umbria by @soultravelers3
59. Why New Tech Doesn’t Need SEO by @brianlburns
60. 1 marshmallow or 2? A study on the benefits of delayed gratification by @glbguy
61. He was the best of candidates, he was the worst of candidates… by @sorenj
62. First Draft Mantra: Make It Crappy by @QRW
63. Holy Cow! Beatle Bob Is In Blender! by @patrikd88
64. Get Your Sleep Or You Will Be Fat & Sick by @myrnaweinreich
65. 7 Mountain Biking Confidence Killers by @UltraRob
66. When The Rich Wage War, It’s The Poor Who Die by @TwisterMC
67. 40 Things to Do with Your Old Socks by @DebNG
68. Me and My Cash Flow Problem by @MMarquit
69. Seven Wonders of the Fashion World by @jaybol
70. Hit Me! SolidWorks and “21″ The Movie by @solidsmack
71. Jason Calacanis – Just the Opinion of a Simple Kansas Girl by @hawksdomain
72. UK Circuit RIder 4.0 Round up by @LittleLaura
73. Police 2.0 – To Protect and to Twitter! by @carterfsmith
74. Weight Loss Success: Core Commitment and Support Podcast by @queenofkaos
75. Understanding The Visitor’s Psychology: Becoming One With The Reader by @tibipuiu
76. Audrina Patridge Explains Why She Accidentally Took Naked Pics by @SheaJ12
77. My Funniest Frugal Fix by @Lynnae
78. Ten CD/Book Release Party Don’ts by @deegospel
79. Tweet me on TWITTER, Tweety! by @RhodesTer
80. Never Underestimate Commenting by @whojaybe
81. Registration walls and user exodus water falls (or, how do you get people to comment on your stuff?) by @ebrage
82. Conscious Breathing-More Than A Health Benefit by @myrnaweinreich
83. Sony DIME Press Event – Foam City, Miami by @hawridger
84. You Can Always Monetize Web Traffic by @FeedbackSecrets
85. How To Install DOMtabs on WordPress by @problogdesign
86. The Joys of Scaremongering by @OwenC
87. When Good Friday is just okay by @jakebouma
88. Broadband Speed Test: How To Estimate Your Real ADSL Speed by @ikaronet
89. TheJetsBlog.com & SportsNet New York Agree to Partnership by @thejetsblog
90. Enemies Are Important: Branding Your Website With the Right Villains by @doshdosh
91. Gangsta Rapper = Future Good Husband? by @AGoodHusband
92. I should stop reading and start doing! by @infektia
93. Hard times in Al-Andalus by @azizhp
94. There Is No Future In This Architecture by @schmutzie
95. 6 Tips For Better About Pages by @jamieharrop
96. You Gotta Have Friends by @Teeg
97. Don’t Tell Your Friends You Make Money, but Tell Your Friends by @ianternet
98. Where Karl Does His First Video Post Naked by @karlerikson
99. 50 Uses for Plastic Easter Eggs by @Raesmom
100. Is Your Ann Arbor home Stinkey? by @missycaulk
101. Apple, La La, and Goat by @stshores24
102. Happy St. Patricks Day! by @Sorka
103. Please Don’t SPAM My RSS Reader by @chrisblackwell
104. Accredited Home Lenders – the kid that touched the stove again by @morganb
105. The Great Manic Depressive: The Markets by @RhodyTrader
106. Engadget leads World Top 100 Blogs by @digitalfilipino
107. 30 Fonts that all designers must own by @justcreative
108. Classic Mod Daylight for Sale by @Remiss63
109. Cancer Fatigue: It Feels Like Death by @susanreynolds
110. How Twitter Helped Me Meet My Deadline by @amypalko
111. How To Recruit a Small Army by @chrisguillebeau
112. Instant Head Relief by @lordlikely
113. 5 Keyword Research Tips to Finding the Questions Your Readers Want Answered by @MartyJ
114. What The Heck Are Emoodicons? by @johntunger
115. Lessons learned from a stand up comedian by @JoshAnstey
116. Beer And Milk = Bilk by @Neil_Duckett

Communication with my viewers and customer is very important to me. Especially for my online store customers. I use live chat tool to do services, answer their questions and communicate with friends on facebook now. Best of all, there is no cost to me! 100% FREE!

AIM WIMZI is the new winner!

So what is AIM WIMZI? Just few days ago, I found a new application list on FaceBook. It’s called AIM WIMZI. So I went to check it out. Now I have added the AIM WIMZI app to my facebook profile. It’s a flash based app that you simply insert a code generated by AIM WIMZI manager to your facebook profile. It allows you to chat with your friends live!

The AIM WIMZI app looks just like Plugoo as a small chat box. You can simply click on it and open the chat tool and start chatting with the person on the other side.

You can choose to change your name and type the message or just type the message on the screen. If the person is offline, you will not be able to chat with him/her or leave offline message (Plugoo gives your the choice to receive offline message). When the conversation is established, a conversation window will popup on the AIM user side.

As you can see, there are two conversations. One is from the AIM WIMZI app on my facebook profile and the other one is from my blog at www.terencechang.com. What make this AIM WIMZI better than Plugoo is the multi-user chat. On plugoo, you will have to click a link and open a new browser window with multi-user chat interface (You can read more about it).

With AIM, you don’t have to open a new windows. It’s built in. How wonderful. In addition to that, you can create many AIM WIMZI widget for multiple sites. It will automatically create a buddy group on your AIM account.

So my buddy list on AIM now have Facebook and TerenceChang.com as two separate group. When your viewers or customers log on to the AIM WIMZI app, it will list their name under each group. So far I have created more than 5 AIM WIMZI widgets for all my sites. I don’t know if there is limitation on this.

Manage the widget is very easy on AIM.com. You can create, copy or delete the widget.

So how do my contact page look like now? I have all three communication tool installed on my terencechang.com contact page. However, I will use AIM as my primary tool.

What else do I like about AIM? With AIMPhoneLine.com service, I can a free local phone number. So I use the number as my customer service hotline. In case of my absent, they can leave voice mail. If I am traveling oversea, I can still answer the calls as local call from the other side of the world. Isn’t that wonderful?

You can read more about AIMPhoneLine service at “AIMPhoneline vs Yahoo Voice vs Skype.”

Do you communicate with your viewers or customers?

The question is how do you use the widget to increase your readership?

If you ever read my post about “Is blog widget your friend? Someone is watching you.” You know that not many people like to be shown on other blog’s front page. So people like me will hide the widgets. So my viewers will not know that they have been watched. Oops! I don’t mean to watch their every move. I mean to protect their privacy and save some space on my blog.

So here you go! This is how the widgets look like on my blog’s hidden page. It shows three widgets from BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and Bumpzee from left to the right.

Since they are all Javascript based widget, it sometimes loads slowly. As you can see I show a lot of faces from BlogCatalog, because it’s most active widget. MyBlogLog is the most searchable by search engine and bumpzee is the less important widget.

If you are my frequently viewers, you might already know that I react to my viewers comment pretty fast and sometimes just within few minutes after the comments were made or after they visit my blog. I sent message to them on one of the social network site. So they know I am actively response to my viewers.

How do I do that? Why do I like BlogCatalog the most?

Personally, I want to know who, where and when about my viewers. BlogCatalog provides one of the features that not many blogger pay attention to. The time of the visit. If you mouse over the faces on BlogCatalog widget, you see when they visited your blog. It’s between few seconds to few days or weeks. I have about 210 faces showing on my widget, which is the max I can display. I them match the time with my real-time hit counter from StatCounter.com and find out where they were from. I, sometimes, click on the faces and go to their BlogCatalog profile and leave message or visit their blog and leave comments. This is one way to send them my appreciation of visiting my blog. So who is watching my viewers?

Here is the comparison between three widgets, which I think are useful. In most of the case, my viewers are on all three widget, which help me understand my viewers reading habit.

BlogCatalog:

I like BlogCatalog. It’s a young blog community with many active members. Great features on discussion and social networking. It could potential drive traffic to your blog.

Pro: It allows you to show up to about 210 faces. Most importantly, it shows how long ago they visited your blog. BlogCatalog has been very active and almost catch MyBlogLog’s traffic. You can find a lot of helpful tips and tricks on the site.

Con: It doesn’t show me what page they visit.

MyBlogLog:

A blog community site that have most of the members, which is not best choice. Not my best choice.

Pro: A lot of members and the most active blog social networks. Many big blogger are list there.

Con: Not much information about your viewer. You have to be active to social with others. Not very good discussion features.

BumpZee:

It’s a blog social network that is built for more professional blogger. A great community to exchange thoughts. A great community site that can truly build your page ranking.

Pro: Give you a report about how many visitors were online now. Show you the page visit state and the top page. Great discussion features.

Con: The statistic is not correct. Not as popular as BlogCatalog.

So. Should you use those widgets to understand more about your viewers?

I don’t see anything wrong with what I am doing. So if you are interested in getting “SHORT TERM” traffic from StumbleUpOn, please continue reading.

First of all, I insist that good and quality content is the only solution for long term traffic. Second of all, I don’t call myself StumbleUpOn expert. I just follow the rules and play safe. All this traffic stuff are based on my observation. I did not manipulate the traffic in any way from StumbleUpOn. However, I do manipulate Alexa Traffic Ranking as you know. Again, I only recommend you to get traffic from StumbleUpOn the nature way. StumbleUpOn can only help you to boost short term traffic. There are some facts about StumbleUpOn, which I did not include in my previous post. StumbleUpOn – The No-Magic facts of building traffic.

These are the facts about StumbleUpOn that you might not pay attention to.

1. Not all 2+ million stumblers are doing stumbler’s job to discover pages. Many of them are just for social purpose and to meet friends. There are also many dummy members, which were created as secondary account for whatever purposes.
2. StumbleUpOn sell traffic to sponsor web site. You can find more about their StumbleUpon Advertising program. It costs the sponsor $0.05 per member visit. StumbleUpOn claims that the member will only see the sponsor page once. I am not 100% sure about this.
3. StumbleUpOn is watching you. In order to know what page you have stumbled. It remembers what pages you visited(stumbled) as well. They will use this information to arrange the proper advertisement sites for you based on your preference and interest. What else do they know? How fast you are navigating the sites. In other words, how long do you stay on the site? They also know what page you are on in other browser windows with the toolbar installed. So they know every page your see on your browser, including your own web sites. That sounds scary. I just don’t know if they will ever use this information against their members for statistic purpose. It does the similar things as Google ToolBar!

[UPDATE] I received an email from one of the StumbleUpOn members telling me that there is misconception about the tool. Here is what he said.

Terence:

You are incorrect on #3 on your most recent post… SU has no knowledge about time-on-site, and has no insight into URLs you visit where you do NOT select a feedback for the site (Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down). Absent the direct “bookmarking” it is blind to your browser experience. Please correct that common misconception about the tool. It ends up making people think its like spyware.

My apology to all my readers who might have been miss-lead by my statement. I do not want people to think StumbleUpOn toolbar as spyware, but I still have the rights to question about it.

Again. I keep saying that a good stumbler will get a good stumbled traffic. You can see the post at StumbleUpOn – How to make yourself a good stumbler. Some people just read me wrong. In order words, if you are good stumbler, your traffic will come. Most people having problem with my statement are those who don’t have web site to send traffic to or don’t want to. If StumbleUpOn can ask you to buy traffic, why can’t we get traffic from StumbleUpOn? We follow the rules.

These are the guide line that I put together.

1. Stumble (thumb up+review+tag) as many pages as you can.
2. Join communities and help others.
3. Get as many friends as you can.
4. Thumb up and write review about other stumblers.
5. Invite friends join your communities
6. Link to your StumbleUpOn profile pages from other web site. Ex. MySpace.com, blogger, facebook, etc.
7. Promote StumbleUpOn in any ways.

All I am saying above is trying to tell people to spent time doing what stumbler is doing and be a good stumbler. I did not mention any traffic at all. What’s wrong with the #1? Some people just don’t read my mind. Thumb down does NOT count in terms of your stumbler score.

There are also some extra facts that a stumbler should know about on StumbleUpOn – How to make yourself a good stumbler, which have generated some controversial attention and drove even more traffic to my site.

Remember, the traffic is based on the category and tag that people provides when they stumble the page. So if the page falls under those less popular categories, the traffic is smaller. Also, you only get portion of the traffic that you supposed to get from StumbleUpOn, because a lot of the members are not active members. They don’t come to your site at all.

The bottom line is not to stumble upon your own page, because it will miss the whole point of “Discovering a new site?” Once or twice is fine, but don’t over use it. So how does your page get stumbled at first place? It is simply get stumbled by other stumblers regardless that they are your friends or just a stranger or any other dummy accounts. If you are a good stumbler with great score and friendship with other stumblers, you can share you pages with them. There is a gray area between share your page and invite people to stumble your pages. Some people call “Invitation” a way of manipulation. I share my page to my friends. It’s up to my friends to thumb up my pages or thumb down my pages. I have no choice. However, if you are good stumbler, you have better chance to get thumbs up by your friends. There is nothing wrong with that? The point is that you DO NOT force and intend to exchange link for stumbling. You share your pages with them. It’s up to the stumbler to stumble your page. How you want to make it happen is not my business. You got the point!

In the past months, my stumbled page got a lot of thumbs up and also thumbs down with bad review. What make StumbleUpOn great is that people have the freedom to speak out their mind. I respect those feedbacks regardless good or bad. I am glad that only few of them are bad. Don’t be frustrated with the bad reviews you are getting. There are many stumblers with huge negative thoughts to everything. They either do that for fun or do that for attention. I give those negative reviews respect, but I won’t feel upset for that. If my page got very bad reviews, that means I will have to rethink about what I said. I will learn from that.

Back to the topic, let’s assume that you are a good stumbler, and you would like to stumble a page you really like. And you understand the benefits that the owner of the page will get, when you stumble the page. You know you will bring them the potential traffic.

So how do you stumble to make this more beneficial?

1. Proper Topic/category and Tag. If you are the first person who discovers the page, you need to pick the correct and proper Topic for the page. If you don’t pick any topic, StumbleUpOn will pick it out from 500+ topics for you. In some case, it will pick the irrelevant one, which will put the page into the deep ocean. So use your own judgment to give it a proper topic (category) as a good stumbler.
2. Thumb Up+Review. Don’t be afraid to thumb down a page. It doesn’t make you a worst person. However, more thumbs up you give out, higher score you will get. The higher score will make your stumble more important. I believe that the score is combined and analyzed by number of thumbs up + reviews + friends you gave out.
3. Timing. If only one person stumble the page and his score is low, it won’t bring much traffic at all. If the second person with higher score thumbs up the page and review it. This will bring more traffic. The time in between these two thumbs up is important. The shorter, the best.
4. The first few thumbs up matters. The first person who stumble the page is less important. The next stumbler with higher score is more important. If they put down the review, it creats more weight.
5. Send message to other stumblers or your friends to take a look the page. Tell them you like it, just don’t force them to “Thumb Up” that page. This is one of the StumbleUpOn Toolbar functions. You can once click to sent the page to your friends or through e-mail. It make no difference than post your link on the Internet and ask people to take a look at it and potentially been stumbled. I don’t know why people are arguing about this as “EXCHANGE” link for traffic. If StumbleUpOn toolbar can do so, when can’t we?
6. The more thumbs up, the more traffic will come. If the page gets more thumbs up in a short period, it gets more traffic faster. If the page has 20 thumbs up in 1 hours, it will generate more traffic than 100 thumbs up in one day does! This is why #2 and #3 is important. If the first few stumblers have higher score, it will have better chance to get other stumblers with the same interest to view the page. So the page will get stumbled faster than random viewers.

All of this observation is not just my observation. It’s not magic. Some of them are written on StumbleUpOn’s web site. I put up all this information because I enjoyed to be a good stumbler and enjoyed the benefits that StumbleUpOn brought to my site. I share this information in return of my appreciation to StumbleUpOn and all of my StumbleUpOn friends. So be a good stumbler to get good stumbled traffic back is what I am saying.

I think StumbleUpOn is a great community and services which bring traffic to a lot of the web sites. We need to appreciate what a great community brought to us. Join me to discover new we sites. You can find my profile on StumbleUpOn.