February 2011 – 7 Veils Social Media

Porn Stars Can Write?!? Duh.

Nina Hartley is a great example of an adult star who is also a gifted writer.

Many people are surprised to find out that porn stars can write. There is a public misconception that adult starts are stupid and uneducated. Well, this is plainly not true. There are many very smart and very talented writers in the adult industry and blogs are giving them a voice where they did not have one before. Because some porn stars have created blogs, many others are wondering if they should begin one as well.

Blogging is one of the big things you hear people talking about as a necessary addition to any website. I would argue this point. There are good and bad things about blogging, but the crux of the issue comes down to the blogger.

You should have a blog if:

you like writing
you have something interesting to say
you have unique content
you are willing to make a committment

You should not have a blog if:

you don’t really like writing
you are only doing it because you think you should
you just don’t think you have the time

What you are trying to accomplish?

establish authority
connect with your audience
add value to your website
build your brand

As an adult site, blogging becomes a more interesting question. There are usually one of two things that you want to develop:

Personal Branding
Company Information

If you want to work on your personal branding, a blog is a great way for your audience to get to know you. You can share stories and pictures from behind the scenes from movies and photo shoots. You can give sex tips, modeling tips, workout tips. You can present your thoughts on the industry and how changes in the industry affect you as an adult star. You can also just be yourself and blog about your life. Many people in your audience want to get to know you on a more personal level. They may feel more of a connection with you if they know what is going on in your life.

If you are using a blog to put your company info forward, you can use your blog to talk about movies you are shooting or the next photo shoot. You can share behind-the-scenes and insider information, even sneak deals in for people who read the blog. Ultimately you can use it as a way for your audience to get to know your company on a more personal level. This helps create loyalty and trust.

Either way, you are focusing on adding value. If you do not think that you can add value with a blog, don’t do it. If you cannot be consistent, getting your blog out on a regular schedule (minimum of once a week) do not do it. If you can’t string two words together without swearing or being incoherent, then don’t do it. But if you can commit to your communication, and you can add some value to your website, then jump in and start writing!

February 28, 2011/by 7veils

Google Images has Free Porn?

7 Veils, Adult Industry, Websites

Friday Feature Photo: SoCal Glamour Girl Tessie Tarrentino looking sexy and making me want that cupcake!

Have you ever gone to Google Images and searched for naked women, sex, sexy, boobs, butt, sexy women…yeah, you get the idea. Yup, you can basically get free porn on Google. Or at least free adult images. You can prevent this, or make the free images work for your site.

Because of the way images register in search engines, there is a good chance that your adult images are being listed on Google Images. When you add pictures to your site, they are often inserted with alt tags, and descriptions, which make searching for images on your site easier. It also gives you better SEO and helps your page ranking. Those tags also ensure your placement on Google Images.

Adult images will not automatically appear in a search. There is an automatic filter set to “Safe search moderate” that will filter out any truly adult graphics. But you can easily change the setting and turn off any filtering.

When someone looks at the image, it is a preview that is linked to the host site. If they click “Full size image” it will often open it to a web page that only shows the photo on the page. This makes it very easy for someone to use the image on their site or download it.

Why this is good

Get more traffic to your site.
Good page ranking via images, SEO.
More exposure.

Why this is bad

People using your image without permission.
People taking the image without going to the site.
You get no money from Google Images.

Having your pictures appear in the image gallery is not necessarily the best thing, especially if you are a member-based site. You want people to pay to see your images, not get them for free through an image aggregator.

What you can do

Keep all your images behind a members-only wall.
Code your images so when people open them up, it goes to your website instead of just showing the image.
Watermark your image with your web address.

The best thing to do is watermark any image that appears in the free section of your site. That way ,if they come up in Google Images, they will have your web url on the image. This will help prevent people from using your image without your permission, and if they do, you are getting your website out in front of more people. If you are worried, best to talk to your web designer about it. Many of them have cool tricks to bypass this, or other methods they can use to direct people to your site.

The Friday Feature Photo from SoCal Glamour Girls uses the watermark method. All of their photos are branded with the site name. Also if you try to view the images from their website with the easy, right click “view image” method. All you will get is the frame the picture is framed in on the main page. It is a great example of creative coding to prevent image theft.

Friday Feature Photo: This weeks feature photo is the very sexy Tessie Tarrantino from SoCal Glamour Girls. SoCal Glamour Girls is an online magazine and social network of sexy women. The site is beautifully put together with tantalizing content from the very first page. But the site isnt just sexy pics, you actually get to talk to the girls. SoCal Glamour Girls is embracing the newest trend in the adult industry and that is engagement. The girls come online and you can talk to them via chat and web cam. Then you can continue your conversation on Twitter, as they all have Twitter accounts. This is a great site to both see and interact with beautiful and sexy women.

Go to their website: www.socalglamourgirls.com

Follow them on Twitter: @SCGlamourGirls

February 25, 2011/by 7veils

Easy SEO for Porn

7 Veils, Adult Industry, Websites

SEO (search engine optimization) is an extremely important tool for your website. Google made this really easy with an auto-populate feature in their search bar. All you had to do was start typing your keyword and a menu would populate below your typing with a list of potentially related search terms. This was great for figuring out some alternate search terms for your site. However, Google black listed porn. They blocked their search box from auto-populating any terms that might lead to adult content. So if you are an adult site, you have to work a little harder to research your keywords – but not that much harder.

SEO is essentially what allows your website to be found by search engines. Most people think that SEO is finding keywords to add to meta tags on your page. If you understanding html coding, that does not sound like a difficult thing to incorporate. However, if you do not do coding, that seems a bit more scary. Thankfully, meta tags are not the best way to optimize your site for SEO. Writing your keywords into your copy is the best SEO.

Most of us think that we know what the best keywords for our site will be. Honestly, you probably know one or two, but most likely you will not guess the rest. Before Google blackballed adult terms, we could just turn to their search box. Now you need to access SEO and keyword applications using other methods.

The easiest (and free) tool for this is Google Adwords. Ynot just wrote a great blog post that takes you through the steps of using Google Adwords for keyword research. Using Adwords, you can search for terms you want to use, and it will give you a list of other potentially relevant keywords and terms. You can also ask it to evaluate your website and it will give you suggestions.

If you have a blog, a great tool for optimizing your posts is Scribe SEO. This is a subscription service, but it’s not expensive, and it does a great job optimizing every post and page on your blog site. It also helps you make sure your SERP (search engine results page) is optimized for search engine listings. It also gives you suggestions for getting backlinks.

Because Scribe SEO is a subscription service you will get more robust SEO help than from just using Adwords. However, Adwords will still give you great results for keywords and phrases. And you can’t beat free. Once you get your list of words you just need to incorporate them into the copy on your site.

February 23, 2011/by 7veils

Facebook: censoring your wall, not your porn

Facebook & Twitter

This photo was taken at the 2004 Adult Expo, and featured in Life Magazine!

Since the release of the new Facebook Fan Page updates the glamour of the cool changes are wearing off and some of the problems are starting to come to light. The biggest problem is the wall, which is no longer showing all your posts. Facebook has added an algorithm to the wall that prioritizes posts by popularity. Beyond that, it chooses which ones to show and which ones to hide. Interestingly enough, this has nothing to do with content. Porn on your wall? Sure, it is a problem for Facebook but not for the algorithm.

Page owners and fans are noticing that not all posts are showing up on the wall. Unfortunately there is not much that can be done about it.

There are 2 setting for viewing posts on your wall:

1. Everyone

Posts by everyone means that posts by you and by your fans will be displayed on the wall.

2. Fan Page

Post by Fan Page means that only posts made by the Fan Page admins will appear on the wall. If your settings allow comments, fans will still be able to comment on your posts, they just won’t be able to make their own posts on your wall.

I generally encourage pages to show posts by everyone. Allowing your fans to participate on your page gives you more chances for engagement. I’m not changing this recommendation. Although the new algorithm is affecting the effectiveness of this setting, it is not negating its effectiveness entirely.

The other problem with the algorithm is that your most recent posts may not be showing up on the wall. This means that timely updates are not as successful. When you make a post it will still show up in the newsfeed as usual, but its presence on the wall is up to the algorithm. This is a big source of frustration for pages that specialize in time sensitive updates.

The good news for the adult industry is that the algorithm does not seem to discriminate based on content. So if your posts are not appearing on your wall, it is not because of the content. Essentially you can post as much adult content as you want and the algorithm won’t care. Of course if your content is rated higher than PG-13 you are at risk of violating Facebook’s terms of service and having your account deleted.

So Facebook still has its own forms censorship, but they are not related to the shift in its algorithm.

February 21, 2011/by 7veils

Google Gives Social Proof to Porn

7 Veils, Feature Photo Friday, Technology

Time to talk to people on Twitter, because Google is giving social proof to porn.

So often I see porn stars on Twitter who only tweet content and don’t interact with anyone. I know we are all the center of our own universes, but if you want to get the clicks you have to take part, so you can be with them virtually at the center of their universe. I always tell people that the key to a strong social media presence is engagement. You have to talk to people. Well, that just became even more important. Google announced yesterday that social search is becoming a truly relevant part of the overall Google search function. This means that Google just gave porn the power of social proof.

Why connections are important

Everything about your web presence is interconnected. The web is a big web! When you have a website, it gets listed on search engines like Google, who then crawl your site for content and post that content on the search engine. When people search for specific terms that relate to your post, it appears in the search results. That is SEO (search engine optimization) in a nut shell. So, if you create a Twitter and link your site, Google picks that up too. When you tweet content, that content may come up in search results too.

Google has integrated a low level of social search for a while, but they just gave it Viagra. Search results will now show you if one of your friends has shared a link. It is now connecting all of your connections and integrating them into your search results.

Who are my friends?

Google’s social circle has gathered information based on your usage. If you have a profile or gmail, you will have a more accurate social profile. They collect links to social profiles they believe to be yours. Then they take all the friends associated with Twitter, Flicker, gmail, contact lists, etc. and count them in your network.

Social Proof

Friday Feature Photo: The beautiful Miss Burlesque 2010, Kylea Killeen

Showing if a friend or even a distant connection has shared a link acts as a very powerful form of social proof. Say you are looking at 5 web links, trying to decide which site to go to, and you see that 3 of your friends shared one of the links. You are far more likely to go to that link. It is the Internet version of word-of-mouth.

Social proof to porn

Porn has had an issue with social proof outside of social networking for a while. There are tons of websites, so unless you know the name of a specific company it can be hard to find the precise site you want. Search engines have notoriously been a challenge for porn sites with SEO. Google has created a black list for their auto search so people don’t accidentally pull up porn search terms. This is fine for safe browsing, but those terms are based on the most used SEO keywords. This helps the casual searcher discover more effective search terms, but if that casual searcher is searching for porn they are S-O-L.

The new social integration will provide social proof to all adult sites. If someone has a site link that is retweeted a lot, this will now appear in the connection recommendation in the search result. This is excellent for driving traffic to a site.

Retweets matter more than ever!

This is why it is even more important for adult tweeps to interact with their fans. If you want people to retweet your links, you need to give them more of a reason than a sexy pic. If they talk to you and feel like they have a relationship with you, they are far more likely to retweet your content. And now, the more retweeted you are the more relevant you will be in Google.

Kylea Killeen is this week’s Friday Feature Photo. I first met Kylea at a club in New Mexico where she was performing. Out of all the beautiful girls in the club, she was the one that captivated me. She is sexy and sensual. It is no surprise that she is Miss Burlesque 2010, Miss Nude US Performer of the year 2009 and a Playboy Golf Girl. Make sure you check out this up and coming performer, she is not to be missed! Go to her website at www.kyleakilleen.com and follow her on Twitter @kyleakilleen

February 18, 2011/by 7veils

New Fan Page; Good for the Adult Industry!

Facebook & Twitter

Facebook is getting engaged. Now you can interact as your brand! Will the adult fan page become useful?

Facebook is getting engaged! On Friday the new Fan Page design was released. The biggest news from the announcement is the ability to use Facebook as your Fan Page. For the adult industry, getting the full benefit out of the Fan Page has been a challenge. However, things just got a little easier.

Adult industry Facebook sites have been relegated to posting only on their Fan Pages, and even then they tend to get deleted because of these posts. Often times, people’s admin profiles get deleted as well, if they have used their admin profiles to network on Facebook on behalf of their Fan Page.

The rule of thumb for having an adult site on Facebook is: keep it rated PG. Other people are posting PG-13 and R rated content, but if you are in the adult industry you are going to be scrutinized more heavily. So tread lightly and you will be fine. The real purpose of your Fan Page is to get people off Facebook and onto your site, so use it to transition platforms and as a way to engage with your fans.

The new engagement ability makes this last part much easier to do. You no longer have to network with your personal profile; you can focus all your engagement efforts onto your Fan Page.

What this means

When you go to your Fan Page, in the right hand menu bar, at the very top, there is a line that says “Admins”. This shows you who the administrators are for your site, and is only visible to them. Fans do not see this. Directly under that line is a list of Fan Page operating options:

The first line says “Use Facebook as…”. This allows you to operate Facebook as your Fan Page. You can post comments on people’s posts, “Like” other pages and post on walls as your Fan Page name. You can do nearly everything you would do as a profile.

This means you can use Facebook as your business or brand, while keeping all your brand activity tied to your Fan Page.

Previously, if you wanted to comment on pages or posts as your brand you couldn’t do it. Many people would create additional profiles for their businesses just so they could talk to people on Facebook in a location other than their Fan Page. There are many businesses who opted to only have a profile instead of a Fan Page because of this limitation. However, this limited them to a fixed number of friends. They also risked being deleted, because you are not supposed to use personal profiles for business purposes. That is why Fan Pages were created .

How it affects engagement

The simple Facebook rule for business is this:

If you want to have an effective Fan Page, you need to talk to your fans.

If you talk to your fans you will increase your reach. You will be passively networking through your interactions with people. This was easy to do with a profile and hard to accomplish with a Fan Page. Now you can post everywhere! You can put your business page in front of as many folks as you are willing to talk to! You just increased your capacity to network infinitely.

Where Adult has to be careful

The new engagement puts you at a higher risk for being flagged for spam. Just because you can now post anywhere, it does not necessarily mean you should. You can still be marked as spam if you are not using your new communication channels with care.

Remember, engagement is about talking to people, not about putting your link out there as much as you can. If you join conversations, and have something interesting to say, you will get people to your page and your website.

Adult Fan Pages cannot have profile images that are too provocative or sexy. Make sure your comments are not just limited to posting links or photos – in fact I would avoid this. Join conversations and try to encourage people to visit your Fan Page, then make it easy for them to find your website.

February 16, 2011/by 7veils

Does the New Facebook Fan Page Help Porn?

7 Veils, Facebook & Twitter

Most of the changes are good. One change is bad. You'd better know which one!

Most of us have just gotten use to the last batch of changes on the profile. Now Facebook has just done a major overhaul on the Fan Page. Last Friday, Facebook announced they have made changes – not just to the layout, but to the functions of the Fan Pages as well. Many people in the adult world have had a lot of challenges using Fan Pages, but many of us still use them. This new functionality might help get the word out about your page without having to rely on advertising (which is basically impossible) or posts, which are not necessarily shared because of content.

Profile style layout

The layouts now share the same style as the redesigned profile. This streamlines pages and profiles, making them easier for people to use, because they share similar features.
Posting as a Page

You now have the option to post comments on other people’s pages and profiles as your professional page name. This is a big benefit for increasing engagement for your page. As an adult page, you can now comment as your “brand” name on others’ posts or walls. This allows for increased visibility for your page while you interact more with your fan base. But you still have to be careful of being flagged for spam!
Photo Strip

The photo strip we have become accustomed to seeing on our profiles is now on your page. Instead of the photos being the most recently tagged images of you, they are the five most recently uploaded photos. This can only be done by the admin, but if you post your pics carefully you can create a really nice photo strip that helps your branding.
Change your Category

You can now change the category of your fan page. It used to be that once you picked a category for your page you were stuck with it. Maybe you set yourself up as entertainment, but now you want to switch to personality or to a brand. Now you can!
Featured Likes

A page can now Like another page. These Likes are featured on the left side panel of your page. Beyond that, you can assign “Featured Likes”, meaning you can designate special pages you want to focus on. This is a fun way to show favor to another page by giving them what amounts to prime passive advertising real estate on your page.
Featured Page Owner

Just like Featured Likes, you can feature a page owner. This will also appear on the left side panel of your page. This is a great way to draw attention to a specific person.

Filtered Wall

This is the big bad! Facebook is now filtering your wall posts. You have 2 choices. One is to only display the posts from your page, which will show chronologically. The other is to display all posts. Facebook is filtering the “everybody” setting by popularity. So, not all posts, tags or mentions will be displayed on your wall. Plus, to be even more frustrating, they are not being shown chronologically either. Posts from today might be directly above a post from last week, or a post from three weeks ago might be at the top of your wall!

That’s the overview of the latest changes. I will explore these a bit further and give some tips on how these can work to the advantage of your adult fan page! Stay tuned!

February 14, 2011/by 7veils

Xbiz awards, no props to tweets

Adult Industry, Feature Photo Friday, Social Media

Friday Feature Photo: The beautiful, and very fit, Muscle Barbie

During Wednesday night’s Xbiz Award show, Twitter was flooded with pics and commentary from the red carpet. Stars posted tweets ranging from getting ready for the event to comments on the happenings. The next day’s tweets were even more overwhelming. All the photos that were taken started flooding the twitterverse. More comments and talk about the previous night’s activities were the trending topic for adult tweets. Though Twitter gave a nod to Xbiz, Xbiz did not give a nod to Twitter.

First thing Thursday morning the list of winners was posted. Those of us who were not yet in the know ran to the site to see who won awards. Consummate tech geek that I am, I checked the tech section first. I am curious to see who won best website and best web services, but I am more interested in the topics. As the internet plays a deeper and more integral role in porn (reaffirmed by Pink Visual launching their cloud site), the categories for Web/Tech are becoming more significant.

Sadly, there was no category for social media. No category for Twitter. No category for innovative social media networks. Nada. I am sure organizations like Adult Talent Registry would like a chance for recognition. What about twitter campaigns that companies like Adult Trading Card Company have launched? It is unusual to be on social media and not have heard their names. Then you have the tweet aggregating powerhouse, Pornstar Tweets. And who is kidding who here, the porn stars would love a chance to get some recognition for their tweeting prowess!

So although the Xbiz awards did not recognize the social media muscle that the adult industry is flexing, efforts are not going unnoticed.

Congratulations to all the winners of real categories from Xbiz. Maybe I should create my own social media porn award. What do you think?

Feature Photo Friday: I met Wendy Rider, aka. Muscle Barbie, on Twitter. I saw one of the pictures she posted and was blown away. Not only is she beautiful, but she is fabulously fit! She is a WBFF Pro Figure competitor, Playboy model, International Fitness Model, and personal trainer. Yup, she is the whole package. Her site is not only pictures and cam, you can get live fitness training from Ms. Muscle Barbie herself!

Check out her website: www.musclebarbie.com

Follow her on Twitter: @musclebarbie

February 11, 2011/by 7veils

My, What a Sexy Twitter Voice You Have!

7 Veils, Adult Industry, Facebook & Twitter

Anyone can be sexy. What makes your voice unique in the Twitterverse?

Finding your voice is an important part of the social media process. It seems like this should be easy, especially if you are in the adult industry, but it is not. All you have to do is be sexy, right? Maybe not. Crafting your online personality is an important part of your branding. Thousands of people in the Twitterverse are sexy, so how are you different? What makes you unique?

The crafting of your personality needs to be carefully based around your objective and your audience. Although you may have an idea of who you are online, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be what elicits the most responses from your audience, or drives the most click-throughs.

Are you a dom? Do your followers want to be bossed around? Are you a vixen? Do you need to be coy and illusive? Are you a Diva? Do you need to be strong and demanding?

You not only need to figure out who you want to be, but you need to figure out who your audience responds to strongly. For some people, primarily talking to other porn stars works for them. Their fans want to see the behind-the-scenes of the porn life. For most, this is not enough. You have to actually talk to your fans and relate to them.

When I first start working with a client, I take a splatter approach to posting. I experiment with a variety of posts, with different tones and content. I do this to begin establishing what their audience will respond to. Your online followers are a unique group, thus you cannot base your communications on the success or failure of someone else.

If our online personalities are a product of our branding, they can also be extremely formative to the evolution of our branding. Pay attention to what your audience responds to, because if your goal is to reach them for sales, support or awareness, you need to know what approach and tone will engage them. Remember, you can’t just bat your eyes on Twitter and get people to do what you want, you have to offer substance and make that substance uniquely yours.

February 9, 2011/by 7veils