If you’re into Social Bookmarking you’ll know about StumbleUpon. But there are some important things you should avoid or you could be putting not only your own site but those of others at risk.

No. 1 – The Thumbs Up Stumble, Stumble

If you click on the Stumble “thumbs up” button and that page has not already been submitted a pop-up screen appears that requires some more detail.

DO NOT CANCEL. If you do the page is only partially submitted. The page is registered but as the submission was canceled no one is associated with it and the page usually suffers as a result.

Any visitor to your blog can just hit thumbs up and then cancel because they don’t want to fill in the details. Bang – your page is consigned to graveyard. Please don’t do this to my pages

No. 2 – The Self Stumble

There is nothing wrong in Stumbling your own posts and StumbleUpon expects you to do so from time to time, BUT, you may get your account terminated if you abuse the Terms of Service. They state that accounts created for the primary purpose of promoting a product or service will be considered spam.

To avoid this you should be Stumbling many other sites to dilute the impact of your own submissions. You should also avoid submitting every one of your posts as you run the risk of a Thumbs Down on any that are not considered good – unless you are superhuman there will be a few dogs from time to time!

No. 3 – The Stumble Mate

Similarly, you should not be limiting your Stumbles to a few of your favourite blogs. This too will start to look like a spamming technique and may lead to your “mates” sites getting penalised. Be careful too of submitting several pages from the same site at the same time.

No. 4 – The Wrong Category Stumble

The first time a page is submitted the submitter has to choose a category. THIS IS A VITAL STEP because only the original submitter can change the category later – and that’s not very likely!

The category selected for the page will be used to determine who sees that page when they use StumbleUpon.

If you set up StumbleUpon to show you pages about, say photography and you get shown pages clearly about politics (because someone has wrongly selected the photography category for a photographic site) you are not likely to approve!

It is vital, therefore, that a page is allocated to an appropriate category otherwise members who are shown pages that they are not interested in may give those pages a “thumbs down”.

No. 5 – Not Using StumbleUpon Correctly

The concept of Stumble is to identify categories of sites you are interested in (when you sign up), and then to Thumbs Up those you particularly like as you are served up pages from the Stumble toolbar. This helps the system serve up better sites to you in the future – more relevant to your tastes. Sites you don’t like, sales pages, too many Adwords, slow loading, irrelevant etc may be given a Thumbs Down.

This helps the system serve up more appropriate content to every user.

If all you are using Stumble for is to submit your own and a few favourite sites – you and your friends sites will suffer from being downgraded and ultimately not served up on the network.

So please, download the toolbar and spend a few minutes each day Stumbling through the sites served up and giving them some Thumbs.

For more detailed information and full training on the correct way to use StumbleUpon I recommend Caroline Middleton’s excellent free course.

Hope to Stumble into you soon.

Mark

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Michel Fortin found out about Homer getting into bed with Sylvie (as reported here a few days ago) and came looking for him. (You may still see Michel in the BlogLog widget below if you’re quick).

He obviously confronted Sylvie. Sylvie in turn has admitted to knowing Homer and she seems to have developed a soft spot for him as she says the post is a “Must Read” where she refers to the post on her new Internet Marketing Sins feedback page.

Don’t forget you can access the whole report at Internet Marketing Sins.

You’ll be glad you did.

The AntiHype

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Post tags: homer, humor, Humour, internet marketing, internet marketing sins, Michel Fortin, Sylvie Fortin
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The use of Twitter had completely passed me by – until today. I admitted to my scepticism a few days ago but now I’m convinced.

I just spent $20 on the best traffic, social marketing and credibility building idea I’ve seen.

The light bulb is shining brightly now that Rick Butts has explained what I should do to use Twitter to build a following.

Rick’s Twitter Squeeze process is so simple and will take very little time to implement. I just wish I’d thought of it!

Understandably, Rick doesn’t want details spilt outside of the members area so I will, obviously, honour that request. If you’re looking to grow your business using social networking and have an interest in Twitter then you may want to take a look. Rick explains everything really well in his videos, plus there’s a bonus e-book that walks you through setting up a Twitter account from scratch – all the do’s and don’ts.

I’ll let you know when I’ve implemented Rick’s strategy and how it’s working

Mark

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Actually no, Disqus is another of those great sites that uses an unusual spelling of a common word.

I started using the Disqus service today and you need to know because it affects you.

Quite simply – Disqus is brilliant.

Ever wanted more interactivity on your blog? How about talking – yes, not only can your visitors leave text comments with this service, voice comments and even video can be created directly on your blog.

Disqus has taken blog comments to the next level.

Give it a try – you’ll be asked to create an account as you leave a comment – the benefits are huge. Comments you leave on any blog that uses Disqus will have your profile attached and others will vote for the quality of your comments.

Spammers are out in the cold and good commentators will reap the benefits – if you leave great comments do you think others may be tempted to visit your blog? It’s what the whole Social Bookmarking movement is all about.

Am I ready to use a webcam to leave my comments – I’m not sure yet. For now I’ll be using voice only – the problem is I don’t look at grumpy as TheAntiHype all the time and my cover may be blown!

I’ve left a short message below as an example of how it works.

I highly recommend it and here’s the co-founder explaining a bit about the service and the company.

The AntiHype

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The week before I was all set to write 4 or 5 posts and stack them for automatic posting in my absence but, as usual “stuff” got in the way. The result was a quiet blog for most of the week and on my return I spent 3 days clearing out the spam emails and returning calls before I could even think about writing again.

I’d looked at Utility Poster some weeks ago when Jack Humphrey first launched it but as I was considering joining Authority Site Center I deferred doing anything about it.

Today, I finally caught up with myself and decided to take another look at Utility Poster so I don’t get caught with a dead blog for a week or more next time I’m away. Simply put, this program can help generate backlinks and posts in a few minutes that otherwise (at least in my circumstances) wouldn’t get created at all.

Jack’s video explains what it does far better than I could although if you take a look at Utility Poster – Finding Gurus you’ll get a great idea of what can be created. That took me less than 5 minutes.

No, it won’t take the place of your usual blog posts but it will supplement those with quality articles, that will also create some welcome links for you, when you just don’t have the time to write a full post.

So, if you are a blogger who sometimes struggles with getting enough posts written you may want to take a closer look at Utility Poster.

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Post tags: blog posts, easy blog posts, jack humphrey, utility poster, writing blog posts
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Image via Wikipedia

I created this post using Utility Poster to see how quickly I could generate something that may be of interest to both readers and search engines yet also ensure the links were relevant and not some rubbish just to keep the blog looking fresh.

With the added benefit of Zemanta (I’ve written about this before) relevant images are automatically found an acceptable post can be created in minutes. (The image is of the Armchair Gurus album cover).

Opening Utility Poster I entered the keyword “gurus” in full knowledge that most posts it found would be of no interest to me.

Within seconds the program had presented me with 50 posts and scanning through I quickly found the following 4 that were of interest:

“The Gurus” Are NOT My Friends

Look at how much time I was WASTING reading the same jv promotion from 10 different self-proclaimed gurus. Somewhere along the line, because of a product purchase, I was subscribed to 5 different lists for Russ Brunson – and yeah, …

A Public Fight Between the Gurus

When a guru (of any kind) describes a system for others to follow, it often becomes something that they start to identify with, and therefore grow to defend against criticism. If you have ever seen someone react to a dent on their car …

Why Is A DoRu Better Than A Guru?

In it, he talks about what a piece of crap internet marketing has become and he blames the current crop of Gurus. He says we’ve got to stop taking advice and buying stuff from people who produce nothing more than sales letters and start …

3 Types of “So-Called” Internet Marketing Gurus that Scam You

I’ve been scammed many times by many internet marketing gurus for the past few years. The total of money I’ve spent were up to thousands and 70% of them are all craps by scammers who claimed they are internet marketing gurus. …

I spent a total of 5 minutes to produce this – that included cut from Visual to HTML format because I did it wrong first time!!

It’s no substitute for good quality original work of my own but when pushed for time and needing to make a post it’s brilliant!

Mark

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1. Some people watched the video here and couldn’t follow the link to the other videos.

This is what you need – Easy HyperLinks Tutorials

2. Suzie from Abundance Highway asked me about Flock so I’ll put together a video showing how great that browser is for Social Bookmarking and putting your most visited sites into easily accessible toolbar folders.

I hope to get this done for tomorrow.

Mark

I’ve also found the following posts about Squidoo Lenses and Squidoo Links that you’ll find useful

Squidoo Secrets Revealed: Drive Unstoppable Traffic To Your Home … - Use your lens like it’s your blog and link to your home business sites. This is such an easy yet powerful technique. Search engines love Squidoo and so links from a high-ranking lens to your home business site can really boost your … Affiliate Marketing – How To Get Into Page 1 Of Google Using Squidoo - What you can do is to visit other Squidoo lens that have content similar to your lens and write comments on them. Your comments should provide links back to your lens. You should also submit your lens to various social bookmarking sites … How to Use Squidoo to Build Your Page Rank - Well, in order to rank that phrase at the top of the search when someone types “housebreaking German shepherd puppies” into Google, I’ll create a Squidoo site (called lens) that has the same keyword phrase, and link it to my page using … Squidoo : Getting Links To Your Squidoo Pages - Squidoo : Getting Links To Your Squidoo Pages Ok, so now you have a lens with some content, and a YouTube module or two and some Ebay products (that don’t directly compete… SlashDashes submitted by SlashDashes.

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So here are my thanks, in no particular order, to those bloggers who have made a difference in my life.

Christine at Self Made Chick for her truly inspiring and honest writing. Christine writes from the heart and often shows her innermost feelings by revealing her true thoughts and admitting what has held her back. A must read for any online entrepreneur.

DavidBDale writes incredible Very Short Novels. Each one is exactly 299 words and the quality is outstanding. Always thoughts provoking and I am amazed at the variety of subjects covered. If you take a look you won’t be disappointed but you may find yourself hooked like me!

Mark McGimpsey for his generosity and willingness to share his knowledge without thought for “what’s in it for him”. Mark writes a great health and fitness blog that always provides a “I didn’t know that” moment.

To Teri who writes a Dog Health blog for her generosity in encouraging and spreading the word about Guru Fodder.

To Diana of Best Flowering Garden for being a regular reader and appreciating Guru Fodder and to Denise of the Gardners Rake for inspiring Homer & Marge in so many of their escapades. (The ice-cream, popcorn and tissues have been provided for Denise in the past!).

Randy, aka The Hermit, at Starting Steps – the most helpful guy I’ve met on the net and Maggie who is an inspiration and an example to everyone of the benefit of perseverance

There are others but rather than create a massive, meaningless lists today, I will add my thanks on a regular basis.

These guys are definitely not guru-fodder and have all been a great help to me.

The Anti Hype

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Post tags: bloggers appreciation day, guru fodder, The Anti Hype
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No, this isn’t Guru Fodder terminology and sorry, today isn’t about Homer & Marge, although they will benefit from what I’m about to say.

I’ve been a fan of the Firefox internet browser for the past year or so, mainly because I find it more stable than IE and the range of add-ons really useful to help me be more productive.

And then along comes FLOCK

If, like me, you’re into Web 2.0 social sites and social bookmarking then this free browser may be just right for you.

Take a look yourself for all of the details but as standard there’s a left hand sidebar with links to all of your accounts with services like Twitter, Facebook & YouTube. Having set them up there’s an easy login and simple drag and drop feature makes uploading photos etc very easy.

I must highlight one area that is great for bloggers.

This post was written using the editor inside Flock that I think is superior to the WordPress editor. There’s more control over font, size & colour and I find the editor works more like a standard word processor application.

When you’ve finished just hit the Publish button and you’re away. Depending on your plugins you may need to go into your control panel and do some editing but on the whole it’s not a big problem.

Flock works with all the major blogging platforms, including the free ones like Blogger and WordPress.com.

It also integrates easily with Google & Yahoo Mail and can be used to receive RSS feeds – everything is just a click of an icon away.

Oh, yes, if you use RoboForm that is automatically integrated as well.

Many of the Firefox add-ons also work with Flock although I understand they have not all been tested.

Download it today – I’m not using it as my default browser yet, but for my Social Sites I think it is great. I’ve just added them all to a single folder that lists them in the sidebar for easy access.

This one gets a thumbs up from the grumpy old Anti Hype.

The Anti Hype

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: flock, internet browser, guru fodder, The Anti Hype, web 2.0, social sites

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Jean-Pierre asked earlier about Social Bookmarking and how it is done.

I found this video to answer the question. It is so simple but very well done & makes everything extremely clear.

With thanks to Lee LeFever at http://www.commoncraft.com/ for creating and sharing this video.

The Anti Hype

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