But now there seems to be a trend (and it could be because I live in my little hole called SEO) recently where good SEOs are being suspended on Social Media sites.

Case #1: Jill Whalen (@jillwhalen) was suspended on Twitter on September 22 at about 1pm CDT and reinstated a few hours later. No reason, nothing. Community support and twitter contacts helped.

Case #2: Rishi Lakhani (@rishil) has been suspended as of September 22 at 3:34pm London time and not yet reinstated was reinstated later that day. A twitter search for rishil shows the large amount of support for his reinstatement. Update: We got the story of why, written up by SEOptimise.

Case #3: My own Yahoo! Answers account has been suspended for “spammy” activity. None of which has ever happened. I have appealed three times, and gotten nothing. Yahoo seems to just not want to hear it. So my efforts to remove spam on Answers, and my support of that site are all for nothing. I am still not sure if I will ever return.

So what is the deal here? Are we being identified and purged no matter what? Yes, this is taking three small cases and making a HUGE assumption. But why are these accounts being marked and taken down? All have been in good standing and done nothing wrong.

Anyone else seen this happen? I’ll update as I learn more.

Fake Spamming by SEOs? is a post from: Kate Morris

There are sometimes that people/businesses follow me that I know and want to follow when I see their names. Just the other day, someone I thought I was following added me and I had no idea I wasn’t following them until I looked them up. Sorry again @WarrenWhitlock

But that’s not the point … the others I have been running across are restaurants. There have been a few in Austin that have added me and gotten some business as a result. One is @kahunastikibar. They added me and tweet discounts and specials that get my mouth watering. So when it’s time for lunch, I have inspiration on where to go. And that is what happened. That day, I visited them for their Monday 2 for 1 special.

So for the restaurants out there, get cracking. No, not eggs. Get on twitter. Find the influencers in your metro area and follow away. Twitter Grader from HubSpot is one of a number of places to get this info. You never know who might visit and start talking about you.

And points go to @SagraAustin for doing the same and inspiring this post.

Restaurant Discovery on Twitter is a post from: Kate Morris

Twitter has allowed me to meet and converse with some awesome people in the past year. My life will never be the same, and I can’t begin to thank the people I have met that have helped, influenced, pushed, and supported me.

So with the help with Gregg Hilferding (@whoisgregg), I posted a thank you page. It’s my way of saying thank you to everyone. You are all so awesome and I cannot wait to get to know more of you.

My 10,000th Tweet is a post from: Kate Morris

Note: Sorry about the mixup earlier, I wasn’t done with this post yet. Was going to wait to post it, but everyone is asking about it now. Stupid feedburner.

We’ve all heard it. Ashton did this. Miley got coffee. Oprah tweeted. All of a sudden all of our friends and family, and the mass public is on twitter. Our little world isn’t our little world anymore. Once Oprah talks about something … the world does it. I worked at a bookstore for years, I know what her influence does.

One thing I have noticed is that the Internet community is slightly annoyed by this new trend. Most are just tired about hearing about Ashton and Oprah, but I have seen some really ticked about it too. I know they have their reasons, and some are valid. This influx has brought more and more “social media gurus” out of the woodwork. People who consider themselves experts because they have a few thousand followers and was on twitter before it got big. Don’t get me wrong, I am annoyed at them too. But the people annoyed because others are banking on this new opportunity remind me of the acronym SPAM – sites positioned above mine. Don’t hate on those that are validly utilizing the opportunities.

I want to bring to light the good things about the masses using Twitter. It’s time for us as online marketers to step out of our happy bubble and see the great things that will come of this influx of popularity.

1. More people means more ears – As marketers, our job is to reach everyone that might want/need our client/company product. With more people on Twitter, the reach gets better. More clients will be able to utilize the power that is social media.
2. Better Ideas – With more people vying for social media clients, it forces better ideas and services for those potential clients. Think the fashion industry. More competition is better, trust me. And the worse they are, the better you look.
3. Realistic Feedback – Kinda goes along with #1, but with more people on twitter, there is more realistic feedback. Instead of 20 mentions a day, a company can see hundreds. This allows them to see a bigger cross section of current and potential clients.

Any more I’m missing? Let me know and I’ll add them.

See the silver lining in everything. Life is much better if you make lemonade (and then sell it).

The Silver Lining is a post from: Kate Morris

Yes, I am a twitter n00b again. So, apparently I have one update in my stream, but as the screen shot shows, I still have 9155 updates overall. So I had someone check the API with my info, and still can’t get past this tweet:

So I am a n00b – and my friends are there to help with tips and tricks for getting started on Twitter. These are actually really good besides the fact that we are all laughing the whole time. So for true n00bs and old n00bs, here are the first things you need to know about Twitter:

An @ reply is when you @twittername someone to tweet directly at them.

Direct messages are tweets shared in secret between two people. Can only be seen by those two people. Please note it’s “d” “space” “name” then the message. Many a new tweeter has tweeted a DM … and it’s not always pretty.

The acronyms are as follows: OMG=Oh My God | OH=Overheard | RT=Retweet

# is a hashtag that people use to denote a specific topic they are tweeting about. Nice for breaking news and conferences.

Becoming Twitter N00b Again is a post from: Kate Morris

But don’t annoy me with your fake shit. Seriously. You might have just got on Twitter, or any other social media thing, and just want to know what is going on. Hell I did that too, but don’t ask the world to be your friend. Start small, people you know, industries you know. (Great Job @kristyann for doing this right) Slowly get conversations going, get people liking you and then mention your new venture. Even some big names in the industry are talking about this topic. It’s annoying us all!

We can all smell advertising, and when your first contribution is “here is my website; buy something!” you get a block from me. Maybe no one else does, but I don’t want that crap out there, and I’m hoping that the admins on twitter notice when someone gets blocked 80 times.

It’s the same on Yahoo! Answers. I am there to help people and point them to our services. But I don’t write the same answer every time. I actually read their questions and answer them truthfully. Even when we can’t help them but I can give some advice.

This new world is about the conversation, the interaction. If you’re not willing to put the time into Social Media, go away.

On my annoyed list (don’t click unless you really wanna know, but Google, feel free to look into these guys):

• (no spam)the6(no spam)figureteam.(no spam)com
• biz(no spam)rotator.com
• topsecret(no spam)fatloss(no spam)secret.com
• Dare2(no spam)Dreams.(no spam)com
• lapon(no spam).(no spam)biz
• the(no spam)success(no spam)masterminds(no spam).com
• More to come (with no links, none 4 these people)

#1 Rule of SMM: Don’t annoy me! is a post from: Kate Morris

http://www.twitter.com/katemorris

More updates as I get time. Things are pretty hectic at work. We have gotten some good MSN rankings for a new project. Don’t know how seeing as the website is a month old, but I’m not complaining, I swear.

The Twitter Explosion is a post from: Kate Morris