Go Beyond MLS

The End Of Dotnext and LeapFish???

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:47:05 +0000

Shortly after publishing the previous post, an anonymous comment was submitted via contact form of the website.

Here is what it said:

just so you know, Ms. Slader is the only employee left at Dotnext. Everyone was let go yesterday

Note to new readers: Dotnext Inc is a parent company of LeapFish.

The Contra Costa Time in fact confirms that Dotnext has been “downsizing” while quoting the CEO of the company:

….”The company has downsized,” said Ben Behrouzi, a Danville resident who is founder and principal executive at DotNext….
…At its peak a few months ago, DotNext had about 100 workers. Now it has about 15, Behrouzi estimated. Numerous employees were let go this week…

The real reason for downsizing and possible bankruptcy maybe directly related to a lawsuit…

Cortellessa vs Dotnext Inc

For the sake of brevity(you can find all the documents of this case on Alameda County Superior Court’s Website), I will only provide copies some documents. Bellow is the copy of the original complaint:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext

According to court’s documents Ms. Cortellessa and the class action members in the above lawsuit were awarded a settlement of $85,000:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Judgement
However recently filed “Notice of Defendants’ Failure to Deposit Settlement Payment with Settlement Administrator Filed” says it all – Dotnext/LeapFish failed to pay:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Failure to Deposit Settlement Payment

A “Civil Order of Examination (Order) Issued” suggest that Dotnext Inc may have some explaining to do about inability to pay the settlement:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Civil Order of Examination

The above document which was filed on August 3, 2010 states that the Defendant Dotnext/LeapFish is considering “bankruptcy or other form of liquidation of assets”(to see the full size of the image bellow just click on it):

In the August 12, 2010 article by George Avalos of Contra Costa Times, CEO of Dotnext/Leapfish continues to deny any rumors about possible bankruptcy:

“We’re not filing for bankruptcy,” Behrouzi said. “We haven’t even considered filing for it.”

No matter what the end result of this ongoing lawsuit may be, those familiar with the story of LeapFish may ask what happened to the $10M LeapFish allegedly raised in the pre-launch phase? Of course the bigger question is whether or not LeapFish will be able to bounce back and recover from this “unpleasant setback”?

Disclosure: The above post is my personal opinion and does not represent official position on the issue of any of my clients or my business partners. Comments (if any) bellow do not represent my opinion nor do they represent position on this topic of my clients and business partners.Similar Posts:

Bloggers Are Disgusting & Twisted… According to LeapFish Employee.

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:54:12 +0000

LeapFish has been given a cold shoulder on many occasions by the leading technology blogs. However, today the things you say on the internet tend to stick around, something LeapFish management and employees fail to understand over and over again.

Ms. Slader, who according to her several online profiles is an executive assistant of Dontnext, Inc. as well as company called LeapFish.com wrote the following Tweet:

I rarely challenge people about what they say on twitter, unless their profile clearly states association with a particular company or institution.

Here is what Ms. Slader’s profile says as of the writing of this article:

Therefore my challenge to Ms. Slader was purely based on her representing a particular company, otherwise Ms. Slader would have never learned of my existence:

Ms. Slader took my comment as a threat:

While overlooking the vicious and very personal attack on my hair style (see my twitter profile picture to see what I am talking about) I would like to clarify one thing, should Ms. Slader cared enough to read this post. My tweet was not to threaten or scare anyone. What I really hoped for, in fact, was that Ms. Slader would get the hint and delete that hasty tweet, before it added more embarrassment to LeapFish’s already struggling reputation.

I also believe that Ms. Slader did not come to a conclusion that “bloggers are disgusting & twisted” on her own, but rather was influenced by her boss(es) or coworkers. Perhaps while taking notes during one of company executives meetings? Therefore it makes more difficult to explain her vicious and personal attack based on disliking my “fictional haircut”, a courtesy of YearBookYourself.com. I only wish I had such a beautiful set of hair!!!

The moral of the story??? Do you know if your secretary is active on Twitter or Facebook? Do you know what is she/he saying? Does it make your company look bad? Should you ask her/him to make their tweets private and hidden from the outside world???

In my opinion, Ms. Slader would be better off calling out, Matt Brown, Robin Wauters, Jolie O’Dell, Trace Richardson, Marshall Kirkpatrick and few others rather than making a “blanket” statements directed towards bloggers in general. Could it be that Ms. Slader is not aware of the fact that LeapFish.com awarded numbers of bloggers with Wiis, personal computers, iPads and plans to award $50,000 in cash in exchange for “good” publicity?

Disclosure: The above post is my personal opinion. No one paid or offered me any gifts to write the above posts.I believe Ms. Slader is good and hardworking individual. I believe Ms. Slader’s opinion of bloggers may have been influenced by others, perhaps even her boss(es). It is possible Ms. Slader made the above statements against her own will.Similar Posts:

Selling Your Website or Blog: eBay vs Flippa.com

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:06:25 +0000

When I wrote about my intention to sell this blog, I certainly did not expect to still be it’s owner more than one month down the road. I would like to thank those offering feedback. Most of those providing the feedback agreed that when it comes to decidea price/value/worth of a website, the buyer will have a final say.

Exposing this website to as many potential buyers as possible may not be as easy as initially envisioned. Part of me sincerely hope that the future owner of this website will be one of the regular readers or subscribers. I understand, however that my hope may not realize. Meanwhile two website come to mind where I can sell this blog: eBay and Flippa.com. I am still uncertain which one to use.

Selling Website or Blog on eBay
Being the King of online auctions it is no wonder eBay attracts thousands of sellers who try to sell website or blog. Yesterday (July 6, 2010) for example 1,591 auctions ended in the category “Internet Businesses & Websites“. The bad news, however, is that only about 120 the those listings actually sold. Two highest auctions ended in $8,100.00 and $13,990.00 – one of these buyers did not get a good deal in my opinion. While eBay certainly can expose you “website or blog for sale” to a larger “audience”, there is good chance you may end up selling you website to some one with very little experience as far as websites and Internet business are concerned. This is certainly not my Intention. I do not want to sell this blog for more than it’s true value is. I was surprised however to see so many auctions ending not being sold for as little as $0.99- surely the domain name along should be worth more than that.

Selling Website or Blog on Flippa.com
Flippa.com is a relatively new website and unlike eBay is exclusively dedicated to buying and selling websites.
It of course attracts completely different kind of buyers and sellers – both buyers and sellers on Flippa.com know what they are doing. It appears that half of the websites listed at Flippa.com end up being sold. Take for example the listing from yesterday, July 6, 2010, out of 89 ended auctions 47 were sold. Even though Flippa.com has a slightly higher listing fee ($19+5% success fee)- it offers more flexibility when the length of the auction is concerned. If you list your website or domain at Flippa.com as public auction you can have it active up to 30 days and up to 6 months if you list your website as a “private sale”.

Since I have never sold a website or domain before, I created following poll to find out if you prefere Flippa over eBay:

As of today, I am leaning towards Flippa.com….Similar Posts:

Make Your Google Local Listing “Stand Out” For $25 Per Month

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:00:16 +0000

It was not the question of “if” but rather “when” would Google finally monetize on their “free” service called Googe Places (aka “Google Local Ads” and “Google Local Business Center”). If you have not logged into your account today, there is a surprise waiting for you. Google is offering you to “yellow tag” some features on your listing for a flat $25 per month fee. Depending on your choice, a yellow tag will appear in your listing, which should encourage internet users visit your website, browse your business’ photos and videos or read the “Google place posts“:

I was trying to find, without any success, a business using this new “advertising” opportunity with Google. Maybe because it is new.

Should you jump on using this new “yellow tagging” advertising? It all depends. If your listing is already getting good results, above described yellow tag can draw more eye-balls to your listing. The good news is that you can give it a try for one month to see how well will it work for your business.

Have you seen these “yellow tags” around yet?

UPDATE, June 25, 2010: Apparently Google has been rolling out tags from city to city since April 20, 2010. I understand, however, that at this time not every one has this option in their Google Places Accout… yet.Similar Posts:

Would You Pay $234,706 For This Blog?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sun, 30 May 2010 13:10:01 +0000

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to downsize as far my websites and blogs are concerned. You probably guested alredy, Go Beyond MLS will be for sale soon, maybe days from now. To be honest I have never sold a website before, so this list of online website value estimators was rather handy to help me write this post. As you can see bellow the estimate range from over $200,000 to $103 (some of the widgets bellow may change by the time I publish this post though). So here are some of the estimates along with my thoughts on some of them…

Markosweb.com estimate www.go-beyond-mls.com at over $200,000
Yes I am with you. I could not believe what I saw either. Sure I would like to think this blog is worth that much, but most likely it is not worth that much. One never knows, however.

When I showed this to my wife, I told her that I am willing to give my car to any one who might be willing to make this offer. She said she would give hers as well. So if you decide to make this offer you will receive a bonus, two sedans in “as is” condition!

Dane Carlson’s widget estimates the worth of this blog at about $25,000.

My blog is worth $24,839.76.
How much is your blog worth?

Dane Carlson’s blog value estimator has been around for some time now.

I remember coming across this widget about 4 years ago and as many other bloggers would check it out to satisfy my ego and dream of the time my websites would make me filthy-rich.

Not sure how correct this estimation is, I would however seriously consider an offer of this amount.

But my guts are telling me that when I list this website for sale and bids will not likely to reach this amount. Only time will show.

No cars as a bonus with will be given to any one who offers this amount, sorry.

Good folks at Websitevaluecalculator.com think this blog is worth only $103?

My site is worth $103.
How much is yours worth?

Come on guys, give me a break! Really???

Considering the yearly cost of domain, plus the web hosting costs your guesstimate is laughable at best. I do want to recover some of that.

Besides if I made the estimate considering ad/affiliate revenue along it would be worth much more than that.

In fact, I believe that the link from this post to your not so cool website value “guesstimator” is probably worth more than that!

Seriously guys, give me a brake.

Initially I wanted to comment on every estimate in this post, however most of these estimators rely on a third part tools and are not always accurate. Most of them are designed for no other purpose than “link-bait”. Neither would I recommend that you would use these tools if you ever decide to sell your blog or website.

I am sure you can find all the tools I mentioned so far and the ones bellow amusing and entertaining. The truth is I will rely on none of them to determine the amount I think this blog is worth.

If you are interested in purchasing this blog, or just be a spectator of an interesting auction (most likely via eBay) you should do one of the following: subscribe to this blog, follow this blog on Twitter or become fan on Facebook.

Bellow are some other guesstimates of this blog’s worth:

URLAppraisal.net guesstimates Go Beyond MLS worth at $17,110.83:

$17,110.83

How Much is Your Site Worth?

Websiteoutlook.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $14439.40:

My site is worth $14439.4.
How much is yours worth?

DNScoop.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $3,450:

My Site is worth
$3,450

How much is
your site worth?

Sitevaluecalculator.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $3,520:

Site Value
Calculator

Values this site at
$3,520

Ninjawebappraise.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $3,582:

My site is worth $3,582.
How much is yours worth?

Yourwebsitevalue.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $6,316:

Sootle.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $36,719:

This website is worth
What is your website worth?

Valuemyweb.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $1,962:

$1,962

Website Calculator

There probably dozen of other similar website “valuation” tools I could have used, but I seriously see no purpose of doing so. At the end the value of this website will be determined by the highest bid/offer. Admittedly, I am very excited about the entire process. If you are interested as well, stay tuned to hear more news on the subject soon.Similar Posts:

The Basics Again: USP

Matt — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:23:22 +0000

I’d like to kick off what I hope will be a short series on the basics of selling anything at all. Of course this applies to selling real estate but it equally applies to selling cakes, CDs or cars.

I am going to start with USP – Unique Selling Point. Now if you know even 1% of what you need to succeed online this should be like teaching grandmother how to suck eggs. However, we all, even me, need to be reminded of the basics.

What is it about the real estate (or necklaces, watches, computer cases or greeting cards) that you are promoting that no one else offers? Why would Mr Joe Public choose you over the other six or seven thousand people in the country offering the same or similar services?

If you don’t know the answer to this question then your business in in trouble.

Let me illustrate this with a story of real estate in the UK. In a small corner of the UK there are three towns. The area they are in has about 120,000 people in it. One real estate agency that has been doing very well opened a branch less than five miles away in a second of the towns. It did not do very well.

Why?

Well, for starters they did not advertise the business but also they offered the same commission rate as everyone else. They did offer a slightly more comprehensive service than many competitors but without something exciting to cause word of this service to be spread the slightly better service was a well kept secret.

So what did they do?

They dropped the commission rate to make it the lowest in the town, they started to offer not just a better set of reports but a guarantee of specific actions at no cost if the property fails to sell within a time period,. They did not tie people into an exclusive contract and they offered free professional photo shoots. All that in a down turn economy.

What they did was change the USP so no the question is not why would Joe Public use this agency but why would Joe Public want to use any other agency.

When the economy is grey then a USP that is a shade of grey different tot he next guys does not stand out.

What will you offer to make your services stand out?

It does not need to be the lowest price (although if you can afford to compete like that good luck to you). Offer the customer more bang for his or her buck and suddenly you have a reason to be chosen.

Stand out. Go further. Be seen.Similar Posts:

Free Press Releases at PRLog: Benefits and Drawbacks

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:07:22 +0000

I have learned about PRLog years years ago, maybe two. If my memory serves me well, I received some marketing materials from them regarding the launch of PRLog and their sister site Article Library at http://artilib.org/. While the idea was interesting, did not look further into using PRLog because I did not believe they will be able to compete with the websites like PRWeb – another leading press release distribution website. PRLog has improved since, and I have been using their services for the last two months.

The PRLog review by Janet Meiners Thaeler inspired me to take another look at their services. But today I would like to list a few benefits along with drawbacks of my own about using PRLog.

The Benefits:

It’s Free
To submit a press release to PRLog does not cost you a penny. In today’s economy it’s a plus I suppose.

Your Press Releases at PRLog go live with a click of the button.
I have used the PRLog for 5 press releases so far- all of them went live right after I clicked the “publish” button. This can be useful if you need to get your news out fast and do not have time to wait through the approval process other website have in place.

PRLog is ranking well in Google and their traffic is on the rise.
I have noticed that all of my press release were crawled by Google within minutes of them going live. One of the press releases has a Google Page rank of 3 while four other press releases have page rank of 2. According to Alexa PRLog’s traffic has been rising steadily over the last several months and according to Compete they are averaging about 1 million visitors each month.

The Drawbacks

Poor click through to your website.
Press releases at PRLog seem to get more views as the “age” – considering that one of the goals of a press release is to “announce” news, it is somewhat backward. Even as the views of your press releases increase I also find that click through to your websites do not.

No control over the anchor text in your links.
When publishing a press release at PRLog, your links are just converted to a clickable URLs. Considering the possible SEO value you maybe able to get from using PRLog, the ability to have control anchor text should be considered by PRLog developers.

PRLog press releases do not get republished on other sites as much as one would wish…
In comparison to other similar websites, press releases from PRLog do not appear to draw much attention from publishers and webmasters. EzineArticles.com will get you better results as far as this goes.

To conclude I wish to say that PRLog has come a long way. If your advertising budget does not allow you to purchase press release services, PRLog should be considered as an option- you can’t beat the free price tag. However you should not expect great results on a single press release at PRLog.Similar Posts:

Get Well Joe!

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:38:21 +0000

Joe Ferrara

This morning as I was gazing at my Twitter account, I saw a tweet about Jay Thompson’s post – Joe Ferrara Needs Our Help. Not the news I wanted to hear today.

According to Jay’s post, Joe was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and is currently in an Intensive Care Unit in a New York hospital.

I have never met Joe in person. Joe however left a lasting impression on me during the few phone conversations we have had in the past.

My wife and I wish Joe a speedy recovery. If you can help Joe and his family with medical bills make sure to click the button bellow – Jay Thompson is coordinating the donation fund for Joe.

Make sure to grab the following code to post the donation button on your website:

Similar Posts:

Setting up Facebook Pages for beginners

Matt — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:32:29 +0000

Matt Brown

Before we set off on our voyage of discovery today I want to give you a bit of background as to why I am writing this article. I have found myself of late being adviser to a lot of people setting up facebook pages for lots of different reasons. Rather than repeat what I have to say ten times I am going to try and summarize it. Where possible I am going to use the Go Beyond MLS page as an illustration.

Now I should also point out that I am not a guru at this sort of thing but a really enthusiastic geek. With that in mind let us look at setting up pages.

What is a page?

A page is a blog.

Don’t look at me like that a page is basically a cross between twitter and wordpress. For plugins you have applications and instead of tweets you have posts with attachments.

All the basics of blogging apply to your page. We will talk about this in a moment. First some basics to make sure we have not missed anything.

Making the page

Most of you that read this article will know how to make a page already but for those that don’t this is the quick version.

1. Go to a page (the Go Beyond MLS Page is good).

2. At the bottom of the left hand column you will see a link that says “Create a Page for My Business” (this link leads tot he same page).

3. Click it, fill out the details and there you are a page. It has no fans (not even you) and is ready for customisation.

Getting the basics in place

There are some things that a page needs before you even make yourself a fan of it. These are simple that it is easy to overlook them.

1. Upload a picture. In fact if you got as far as making the page and did not have the perfect logo then you need to stop whatever you are doing and get one. Now.

Your picture is your only branding that you get. Everything else looks exactly as facebook wants it to look.

A good image can be as tall as you like but is limited in width. Take a look at the Lord Matt fan page (and become a fan perhaps). You will see that it has a customised image that fills down the page and adds my character to the page. I also get to make the public speaker and blogger points boldly while getting two pictures of me on the one space.

If you do not have the skills to make such an image then a photograph might do. Just remember whatever you use had better be yours to use.

2. Put something short and snappy in the about box.

Treat this like the most important tweet you will ever send. I like to end with a call to action (suggest to friends).

3. Find something worthwhile to say for all the fields under the info tab.

If the fields on the info tab are very much not what you need and do not fit in the slightest then you are not to late to delete the page and try picking a better category. Make up your mind now because it’s the work of ten minutes to change things with no loss if you change them now.

Okay assuming that you stick with your current settings write that “about” section and make sure you make it good.

You have around 100 to 300 words before people have to click to see more so just like blogging you must capture people’s interest within as few lines as possible and then keep it. If it takes days to get the “about” perfect then that is what it takes.

4. Consider making the about tab the default landing page because your wall is not going to be very interesting to start with.

There are more advanced things you can do like adding new tabs that people land on but for now let us just stick with the info tab.

To make it the default landing page you are going to have to click “Edit Page” which is found just under the image you set a while back. Get in there and make some changes.

5. Consider making the default for the wall both fan and page so that it is as much like a basic facebook profile as possible.

You can do this when looking at the page proper.

Still not ready, whatever you might think

It is still not time to be a fan of your own page. The basics are done (more or less) but now you need to do something so fundamentally simple that you could actually miss it entirely.

You need, and I do mean need, to make one of the best status updates you have ever written. You need this because as soon as you are a fan it is possible people you know might come and visit the page. Becoming the first fan is the first motion that starts the door opening and you do not want to invite people to the party before the catering is planned.

Only then are you free to fan the page.

How to get notifications when someone comments on your page

There are only two ways to get a notification of something getting a comment (that I know of) on a page.

1. You have to like the something in question – press that like button and move on.
2. You have to comment on the something and (I think) not be an admin.

A word of warning to page owners with many posts. If you go “like” made you will spam the hell out of your own wall and devalue it. Also if you are the only one carrying out actions on the page it will look spammy if you went and liked everything. No one likes everything. Don’t do it.

If you can get a friend or two that you trust to co-admin the page with you then you can carve the likes up between you but remember that none of you can comment as you on the page once you are an admin. So you might like to get your closest friends to poke you when there is something to look at.

Honestly though you should be going to your own page most days anyway…

Your page is a blog so write on it

Your facebook page is a blog. So like a blog you need to write on it. Daily.

You want to see regular updates. Links, videos, comments, forum posts (that’s a whole other topic), pictures and all the other stuff that walls can have and it needs to happen organically – a little at a time.

I’ll talk about how you can automate a few tasks at another time and place but before you can understand what tasks can be trusted to a computer you need to understand the tasks. Most of them can only be done by you.

Now that we are one!

Now that you have your first fan (you) it is time to get more. This is how.

1. Add value. Make it worth while to be a fan.
2. Invite all your friends. Twice if need be.
3. Link tot he page on your blog or website.
4. Do not stop with the valuable updates.

Getting fans is a slow and organic process but by removing reasons not to fan your page you help things move along well.

I’ll be talking about this and other topics soon.Similar Posts:

Blogger.com not too good for web 2.0 marketing

Matt — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:03:26 +0000

A minor point of irritation, for me, was to discover just how badly blogger.com treats things like meta tags.

Now I know full well that meta tags are not exactly ground breaking for SEO but when it comes to social linking several tags can be quite important. Specifically the meta description tag. When posting a link in facebook the meta description is the first source of content for describing the link.

Ugly facebook link

I first noticed this when working on my Face Link tool which was created to make facebook link links for blogs. Here is an example of a good looking link to my blog. You can see that the tool was able to get a title and a description

The fantastic site of Lord Matt

The realm of Lord Matt – Lord of vast imaginary tracts of hyperspace.

Generated by Face Link Tool with thumbnail by BitPixels

Beyond making my little applications work the meta part of a web page also impacts of the quality of your search engine results listing. The description being used most often as the text that goes with the search result.

As such in a competitive market not using a description tag is a fatal mistake that your competitors will take advantage of.

So the result is not just that pretty much all blogger blogs produce rubbish looking links in facebook but that they have a significant disadvantage when the going gets tough. After searching for a while I have concluded that there is not really a decent solution to this aside from putting Google off with duplicate description and keywords.

In short blogger.com is not, in my opinion, suited to the world of web 2.0 nor business marketing.Similar Posts:

Go Beyond MLS Facebook Page

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:20:45 +0000

After Matt’s fantastic introduction to what I think will be number series of posts about Facebook Marketing- it is finally time to announce the Facebook Page of Go Beyond MLS, even thought Matt did it in some ways. The main reason for not promoting this page before, was my own confusion about pages an apps on Facebook.

A while back I have tried to use a WordPress plugin called Facebook Connect by Sociable. To use this plugin an application was created for this blog on Facebook for the purposes of showing latest Facebook visitors, register new users once they left a comments etc. In the end I gave up on using the plugin since it had some flaws at the time I did not want to deal with.

In short, I confused them (Facebook Apps and Facebook Pages). However, after creating a Facebook page for Chocolate Belles, a business I have been advising about internet marketing over the past two years, I found a new appreciation of Facebook Pages and how useful can it be for any business. But I have to leave it at this, sine Matt plans to share more useful tips about Facebook and all it has to offer to help you with you online marketing efforts.

In the meanwhile if you do not see your picture in the widget bellow, chances are you not yet the fan of Go Beyond MLS on Facebook, please join us and don’t be shy to interact with us on Facebook.

Go Beyond MLS on Facebook

Similar Posts:

Facebook Marketing: Initial Case Study

Matt — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:35:48 +0000

Go Beyond Facebook

What I am going to do int his first article is simply look at the Facebook fan page for this website and use it to explore Facebook pages in general and what they can do for your blog (regardless of niche).

Vlad tells me that apart from setting up the page he has not actually done very much with it least of all tell anyone about it.

This, for this article’s purposes, is fantastic! It means that we can actively measure what I am about to have said (keep on reading or you might miss it) and watch what happens as we implement the theory. Over the next few months I’ll revisit the topic of Facebook and representing your blog therein reporting on our efforts to go beyond just having a page and to actually getting traffic from it.

As I write there are 3 fans. In three months let us see if we can get over 100.

The page as it is

Go Beyond Facebook Page

As the page stands there is nothing obviously “wrong” with it. The blog posts are being added to the page and there is a graphic that matches the website theme. However, as you can see, there is a lack of variety and this makes the page visually unappealing and repetitive.

In other words we have settles down to making Facebook a very expensive feed reader. That’s fine but it’s not exciting enough to get the average Facebook user to do much by way of interaction.

According to something I was reading (somewhere) the average Facebook user fans two pages a month. That means to see growth in the page’s fan base some work is going to be needed.

Then the page must add value to the user’s day and if that was not enough it must actually be interactive enough to get enough interaction to show up in the news feed of the fans who have added it.

Facebook promotion is no walk in the park. Keep reading for an insight into using pages.

Go beyond what is missing!

The first thing that most people are going to say is missing is the fans. Look for yourself. (When I wrote this there were three of us)

Go Beyond MLS on Facebook

Yet this is not what is missing but a metric that we are heading in the right direction to attract people.

What is missing is the variety of media that can be found on any page in Facebook.

Pictures

This is a tough one for a blog. Many blogs are of non visual topics and yet people are going to want to see that the blog has something of a gallery. Pictures break the page up and give the senses a change of pace.

So what can a blogger show pictures of?

Well for starters there is the writer or writers of the blog. Assuming that your names are known then some images of you serve to help the fan connect with you on a deeper level.

If images of oneself are not enough then there are diagrams. A well thought out diagram illustrating some key point from you recent blogging allows Facebook users to see that they are getting exclusive content.

Product shots – fans in your t-shirts. If you produce a physical product then this is an ideal space to allow fans to show themselves off with their newly purchased product. Mum’s, sisters and close friends might also agree to get the ball rolling.

Status updates

The Facebook page is like your personal Facebook wall and has the opportunity for you to speak with the voice of your blog. Give your fans something to ponder or shout out to a fan that has submitted some particularly interesting comments.

Let the Facebook users know that the page has a life that goes beyond publishing the blog feed.

Videos and links

Any article, youtube video or podcast by someone interesting from in or near your niche could be worth sharing on your page. The concept of linking out, adding value and being the resource for others that drives blogging applies here too.

Furthermore a good resource can be sued to connect with your Facebook friends and promote your page to them in a not-at-all aggressive way. Posts of all forms of link have a SHARE button which will post the link to your page and say “from NameOfYourPage” which gives you a little exposure and, so long as it is interesting, enhances your social capital as an interesting person.

Go Beyond what is expected

One thing that you will find about pages is that they have very little opportunity for energy saving automation, branding or free text. However with a little inventiveness you can get quite a lot out of them.

Take as my first example a little shameless self promotion: My very own fan page.

The image below is a screen shot of that page.

Matt's Facebook Page

You might notice that the left hand side is almost all customized. This is because there is no limit on relative height for your profile image. Use this space to get the most out of the branding and impact space of your page.

In my case I made sure there were images of me that I could use to get an attractive thumbnail which you can see is a picture of a poster of me getting some attention from the lovely ladies (yes it is a genuine fake).

A little planning and you can maximize your impact buy controlling the image dimensions.

Additionally you might notice int his screen shot that there is a visual variety in the posts themselves. This happens to be because I posted a largish number of links recently and have yet to write a new blog post.

Talking of blog posts when-ever I write a blog post I know that my Facebook page (and twitter account) will be updated to. To do this I use NetWorkedBlogs which is a valuable application for Facebook using bloggers. To get the most out of it it is vital to make sure that 80% or more of your blog posts have an image in them that the NEtWorkedBlogs app can use. Keep the images varied and the page “wall” will look interesting.

You can also get added feedback onto your page if the NetWorkedBlogs application posts to other locations (like your personal wall or another page). This is because a like or a comment in any location is a like or a comment on all copies of the post. This too makes your page look interesting.

Going beyond the theory: The game plan

This is the game plan for the page over the next few weeks and months in roughly the order they will be carried out.

1. A taller image.

2. NetWorkedBlogs doing it’s thing.

3. Status updates, links and videos.

4. Invite fans.

Once this minor tweak is fully in place I shall revisit the topic and look at what else can be done to use Facebook to engage with potential readers and promote your blog. The results we are looking for as a result of good promotion of the Facebook page are:

1. More fans

2. More fan interaction

3. Traffic to the blog

Final thoughts

So far we have not looked at methods of getting from three fans to one hundred. However it is vital to get the foundations right or the rest will not stand up too well.

Have you made a fan page yet? What was it like and did many people “fan” it?Similar Posts:

More Nofollow Tags On Twitter: Is This Beginning Of The End For Twitter?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:14:16 +0000

UPDATE, March 2, 2010: After experimenting with a plugin for Google Buzz, I have decided not to use on at this time. All available plugins as of now offer to ad comments to Google Reader items- this potentially can scatter the discussion all over places. Hopefully a better solution will be implemented soon.

With the arrival of Google Buzz, I began to question whether or not I should continue to concentrate on Twitter. I hope I am not the only one. Two days ago Twitter decided to intruduce even more “nofollow” attributes this time to their internal linking structure. I understood (but did not agree) when they introduced the first round of nofollow attributes to their links, I guess as young startup you needed to do what you needed to do.

So today I have replaced the Tweetmeme button (courtesy of Tweetmeme ) with new and shiny Google Buzz button (courtesy of Hameedullah Khan). The Tweetmeme button was moved to the button of each post. This is just a symbolic gesture of my personal dissatisfaction of the way Twitter is “innovating”, I have nothing but love for Tweetmeme.

Twitter has bigger issues to deal with….

For Twitter trying to manipulating the flow of the Google juice at this stage of the game is really childish, and if that is the reason for the latest change I just feel sorry for Twitter. Really guys, is this the best you’ve got? Now if the recent change was made as a further attempt to eliminate spam my question is the same, is this the best you’ve got? There are ways to eliminate spam without punishing your users.

There is also another factor, and I maybe completely wrong about it… I appears to me that many of my online are starving for a more meaningful way to keep the conversation going (which in my opinion is impossible to have on Twitter). So if you compare Twitter and Google Buzz from that perspective, Google Buzz wins hands down, and if you thought Google Buzz is no threat to Twitter you should really think again.

Now back to the new and shiny Google Buzz button- you need to use your GMail/Google Reader to interact with it. You can also follow Go Beyond MLS on Google.Similar Posts:

Optimize Your WordPress For Smart Phones With WPTouch

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:55:04 +0000

The cell phone I currently have is not exactly what you can call a “smart phone”, but every so often I like to check and see how my websites and blogs look on my phone. According to Google Analytics, I am not the only one to try and access my blog on my cell phone. During last year there were 83 attempts to access Go Beyond MLS using number of mobile devices:

While the above numbers are not something to brag about, I still was surprised to learn that there were attempts to view this blog on mobile devices.

I am sure that the experience of the above users was not the best one. Navigating this blog from a mobile device has probably proven to be a complete nightmare… Until a few days ago that is.

If I have implemented changes correctly, this blog is now optimized for mobile browsing and users should see it in manner shower in the picture to your right. How did I do it? Simple. I used a plugin called WPTouch (developed by Dale Mugford & Duane Storey of BraveNewCode). You can also download WPTouch at WordPress plugin repository.

The reason I decided to go with WPTouch is that it offers easy way to customize the feel and look of the “mobile version” of your WordPress, if you like to keep the color scheme that resembles your website for example. Currently the plugin allows you to customize colors of title, header, sub-header and links. I wish however the developers would also allowed changing the background image/color right from the plugin’s dashboard:

The plugin also offers an easy implementation of AdSense mobile ads. Just enter your AdSnese publisher ID and your AdSense channel and you all set:

Your AdSense ads will be published on every “single post” of the “mobile” version of your website:

WPTouch is the most advanced way to optimize your WordPress for mobile phone users and visitors that I have seen so far. It does not seem to conflict with any of the other plugins I use on this blog. The developers, however, included a list of plugins that are not supported and may not work well with WPTouch- you can see that list in the plugin’s dashboard.

A special thanks goes to Zac Johnson for introducing me to WPTouch.Similar Posts:

Greetings Earthlings

Matt — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:12:06 +0000

Matt Brown

After such a great introduction by Vlad I feel rather ashamed that it has taken me seven days to even write anything. These things happen and when I figure out a fool proof way of making sure that life never slows you down I will let you know. My name, as you might know, is Matt and my mission here will be to bring my rather British perspective to the topics at hand.

During the next few months I shall be taking a look at promoting your website using various tools that are freely available. With each one I will be taking this blog’s own presence (or lack thereof) and using it as a case study. You should be able to expect me to report back on the effectiveness of the different methods and techniques that I will be talking about in a series of follow up posts.

The first thing I will be looking at is the creation and promotion of a facebook “page”. There is a lot of ground to cover which is where I have been and what I have been doing. The first case study is almost ready for you. So, as they say, watch this space.Similar Posts:

Thesis Theme Supercharges Your WordPress

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:21:27 +0000

As a WordPress user, I have come across many premium themes. Some were good, some were not so good. Several tims I was close to buying at least one of the premium themes (I believe it one of them was called “Revolution”) but none of the premium WordPress themes satisfy my website’s needs. So instead of going with a premium one I used to chose a free theme, and then tweak it, and tweak it, and tweak until I was satisfied with what I saw. The problem of course was that some WordPress theme developers have their own style (an some have no style at all) when it comes to coding the theme. The end result is that in many cases, one can waste considerable amount of time looking for example at CSS files and trying to figure out what controls what.

When I first heard of Thesis, I pretty much dismissed it as one of those premium themes that will not do much for my websites. However I was fortunate enough to have a closer look at this theme on a website of a friend of mine. Needless to say Thesis is on the top of my shopping list. The video (subscribers might need to visit this post to see it) bellow explains better than I ever could why I am falling in love with Thesis.

Click here to see more videos about Thesis, including video about it’s Design Flexibility and SEO benefits.

When trying Thesis on the website of a friend of mine, I immediately realized how easy and intuitive Thesis is. Most of the changes I made for example to the original theme that powers this blog, can be done via “options” in theses without need to modify themes files nor CSS. In addition it also can eliminate number of plugins you might be currently using. If you are looking for a suitable theme for your WordPress site, Thesis should be given serious consideration.Similar Posts:

Matt Brown To Co-Author Go Beyond MLS

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:00:10 +0000

Matt Brown

In the past I asked a few guest bloggers to write posts for this blog. Today I am absolutely thrilled to welcome a permanent co-author and contributor. You probably have met him on Twitter and Facebook already and can recognize him by his signature hat.

Matt Brown (also known Lord Matt around the “Interwebs”) is an incredibly talented blogger, web hosting and domain management guy, SEO and Content Marketing professional and most of all my friend.

Matt offered to co-author this blog after I revealed to him that I was planing to part with this blog and put it up for sale. Yes Go Beyond MLS was on my mind when I was making my new year’s resolutions. But now I will hold off selling this blog at least for another 6 month or so.

According to Matt, my intention to prepare this blog for sale was nothing else but an attempt to put a coat of “cheap paint” to make it more shiny. I could not agree more.

With that said, I look forward to Matt’s contribution and future posts. If you are interested to learn more about Matt, you should follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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More Spam From LeapFish???

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:00:45 +0000

UPDATE May13, 2010: Things pertaining to LeapFish.com, their founders and management, along with related startups are no longer of interest to me, therefore no further comments are allowed on this post. There are also more reliable sources out there (such as Better Business Bureau) to help you make an informed decision about LeapFish.

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

UPDATE Feb. 5, 2010: It appears LeapFish is no longer showing the link in the footer of their website to their “directory” I wrote about bellow:

This change must have been implemented today as Bing.com’s cached page of LeapFish from yesterday February 4, 2010 still has the link:

LeapFish has also implemented robots.txt file on their website disallowing web crawlers from indexing the directory:

Few days ago I tried to to get attention of Google’s Anti-Spam Czar – Matt Cutts via his FriendFeed account. I wanted Matt to comment about LeapFish’s latest directory- but I realize, it may not be Google’s practice to comment on these sort of things publicly. That or you need to be Michael Gray, Aaron Wall or Andy Beard to get some one like Matt Cutts to listen to you.

So what is my latest beef with LeapFish? Their spammy directory located at http://www.leapfish.com/dr/ – my apologies for not providing a live link, I consider LeapFish to be an unsafe website. It also appears by my estimates that Google is indexing this new directory at the rate of about 50 pages a day- there are about 200 pages in Google’s index from this “directory” as of this writing.

So I invite those who are still with me to explore some of the pages from the above mentioned directory. One of the first pages from the directory that jump at me was “Shopping”:

Clicking through to the page on LeapFish.com you are given opportunity to “narrow” your search- so I decide to narrow mine to “Death Care”:

What do you know?!!! Now you can narrow your search geographically- naturally I selected New Jersey the state I live in:

How about that?!! LeapFish knows all the counties in the state of New Jersey- naturally my next selection would be the county I live in:

How about that?!!! Turns out LeapFish is so intuitive it knows about every city in my state- so just for the heck of it I decided to check and see what kind of death care shopping I can do in Jackson, NJ:

And the relevancy of my final destination in LeapFish directory? Google search results associated with the death of Michael Jackson?

What can I say? I am extremely disappointed. I am sure few results of local funeral directors or even a local WalMart with the line of their latest caskets would not be as disappointing. Since LeapFish is using some APIs from Google, they could have really impress me by showing me a few relevant products using Google Base API.

So yeah, I am desperate for the attention from Matt Cutts. Matt could you please explain to me how this sort of “directories” improve the State of The Index? In my opinion the LeapFish Directory does just the opposite- LeapFish pollute the Internet.

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.Similar Posts:

Should I Cross-link My Websites?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:55:03 +0000

This is something many web-masters struggle with. You create a new website that is going to knock every one socks off, but now you need Google and other search engines to notice it. The quickest way is to slap a few links on other websites you have that may already rank well and are well indexed by the search engines. But is it good idea? As Matt Cutts of Google explains in the video bellow, it all depends. If you have few minutes it is well worth watching:

Similar Posts:

CEO Of LeapFish Removes Rebuttal To Click Fraud Bombshell

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:04:26 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

About a year ago TechCrunch, world’s leading technology blog, wrote about threats of click fraud LeapFish employee used to intimidate potential clients into advertising on a newly launched meta search aggregator. The CEO of LeapFish, Ben Behrouzi, fired back with an emotional response, in which he seems to be “calling out” TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters for being “irresponsible and distasteful”. The original post appeared on February 4, 2009 at www.benbehrouzi.org – what seams to be personal blog of the CEO of LeapFish.

The rebuttal was taken down some time at the beginning of this year, 2010. The link http://www.benbehrouzi.org/2009/02/04/leapfish-gets-second-lashing-from-techcrunc/ seams to point to a page that no longer exists. The rebuttal was referenced by “online authorities” like Wikipedia.

It is possible that the post containing the rebuttal was taken by mistake. But in case it was taken on purpose, bellow is the copy of the original post minus the updates:

LeapFish Gets Second Lashing, Beginning to Think TechCrunch Just Doesn’t Like Us

Today TechCrunch covered LeapFish for the second time, but unfortunately they again did not focus on the engine itself or its future. Instead of discussing our new click free search technology or our recent increase in traffic, or the sheer number of advertisers/investors that have joined the program, Techcrunch made news out of an irresponsible act committed by 1 out of 80 sales representatives that we employ and set us up for ridcule instead. I was very disappointed at the way they handled this to say the least.

I’m beginning to think they just don’t like us. I hope I’m wrong. I did offer the following response, which I haven’t seen posted as of yet.

Robin,

We have completed an investigation and have dealt with the matter appropriately. However frankly put, I am disappointed at this post by you and by TechCrunch. You never contacted us to verify the information you posted or even checked to see what our position was as a company around such behavior before you published. You apparently called in but didn’t make the effort of speaking with someone about this. Frankly put, I find your post’s title and content irresponsible and distasteful. Nevertheless, I apologize for the poor choice in judgment by one of our sales representatives and we want your readers to know that we took swift and immediate action to correct the matter.

Additionally, we have called, spoken to and offered a sincere apology to the prospect that was mistreated. We have expressed our regret and embarrassment over the situation. We have also offered to pay restitution for any fees the prospect incurred and will cover any damages. Additionally, we will be offering a gift of a keyword of the prospect’s choice as a further sign of our apologetic stance.

Let me clearly state, that LeapFish has a 0 tolerance policy for the behavior described and in no way, shape or form endorses the behavior whatsoever. Our sales staff is not coached nor encouraged to engage in such tactics and this is a regrettable act by a single individual who exercised poor judgment using personal email accounts. Our entire sales staff has been met with and spoken to and been firmly reminded that we do not engage in such tactics nor will we tolerate it whatsoever.

Robin, I find your post unfair and damaging, but I harbor no ill will towards you and I hope that one day one of your posts will actually give fair attention to our true offering and features, as provided by Silicon Valley’s MercuryNews and the thousands of visitors, supporters, investors and advertisers of LeapFish.

I would be more than happy to discuss with you why LeapFish has a bright future, the real business model, its time horizon for delivering ROI and the expectations communicated to our thousands of advertisers/investors.

Thanks again.

Best,
Ben Behrouzi
CEO
DotNext Inc.

I personally have no interest in Wikipedia, but if you are a fan, you should make an attempt to correct the reference #8 on the following page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeapFish

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.Similar Posts: