Facebook Seeks Testers for Q&A Product

Facebook:

"We at Facebook are preparing to launch a brand new product to the world. We think it will be as exciting as Facebook Photos and Facebook Events, but we need your help to make it great. As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It's up to you. You'll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people — including job recruiters. And we'll bring our best beta testers out to California to tour Facebook headquarters and meet the team."

Google better start thinking about it's $50M purchase of Aardvark before Facebook usurps it. #

Putting $10,000 in Newspaper Ads Over Social Media

Paul Williams writes that given a choice he would rather plow $10,000 into newspaper ads over social media...

"Social media is a great way to keep the conversation going with your customers outside of your store. A way to listen. A way to learn.

Social media is our gold rush. With the zillions of tweets, Diggs, blog posts, and Facebook updates all panning for attention I’ve only heard of a few who have ’struck it rich’ as a result.

With $10,000 to spend. I’m going to put it into a well designed ad, in a print medium, my target audience reads".

If we're talking ads to ads I can see where he's coming from. Although, $10,000 in Google ads could be a better initial investment than both combined.

However, then fact remains that advertising is untrusted and it's thought leadership and expertise that rises to the top in today's world. People want to know what you stand for before they develop an ongoing relationship. #

Pop Culture Dominates Facebook

Hubspot says that pop culture - movies, books, TV shows - have attracted the most likes on Facebook. I'm not surprised. But it does justify cross-media storytelling.

Obsession + Topic + Voice = Content

Marco Arment captures how John Gruber and Merlin Mann consistently create compelling online content...

Gruber says that when he’s writing Daring Fireball, he’s picturing his ideal reader — a copy of himself — and conceptually writing just for him. With everything he writes, he’s writing to and for that one ideal reader, not trying to boost his SEO for target phrases or appeal to an ever broadening demographic.

Simple formula, but it's rare people follow their interests so obsessively that they want to create content around it. Be that guy or gal before someone else is. Walk in the footsteps of giants. Give a listen to the full podcast that Marco links to as well. It's worth the hour spent. #

Finding the Write Words with Data

1st Web Designer on finding the right keyword:

1. Define the keywords that people use to find your business
2. Find out how many people are actually using the keywords you have selected
3. Define your competition and make sure the keywords you have chosen are relevant
4. Finding the best keywords
5. Breaking keywords into pages

Great advice. But swap out the word website and substitute any content that ends up online - blog posts, videos, press releases, journalism. Everyone who aims to be creating findable stuff needs to sweat the data.

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