Twitter gets Fancy

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Fancy Twitter BirdTwitter has just announced a new feature. You now have the ability to see your friends timeline. Essentially what this does is let you see what you friends see when they login to their Twitter. The argument for this is that if you are following an influencer you might be interested in the type of tweets they are interested in, in order to expand your network or learn from their Twitter style. The reality is that most of the people who are considered influencers follow a lot of people, so it is unlikely that use their primary timeline for monitoring their feed. They likely use lists to follow the people they are truly interested in.

List are something you have always been able to view, unless the person has set the list as private. So in essence, you have always been able to see the feeds of the people your influencers timeline, or at least the one they pay attention to.

I use a listing strategy for growing networks and for managing my tweets. I categorize the people I follow into groups that are relevant to my usage of Twitter. For instance, I have an “Adult” list that features people who are in the adult industry but not porn-stars. For the porn-stars I have an “Adult Stars” list. So if you were interested to see what timelines I watch, I would recommend looking at my lists or the lists of the other influencers you pay attention to.

Feature Friday Photo: Adult Trading Card Misti Dawn

Feature Friday Photo: The incredibly sexy Adult Trading Card of Misti Dawn.

The new “friends timeline” feature is being rolled out slowly across Twitter. Most people do not have it yet and as more people get it I am sure we will start seeing some feedback. Though likely it will not drastically change the way people are using Twitter.

This is the third big announcement from Twitter in the past week.

Earlier this week they announced the acquisition of Tweetdeck, a third party app that is used for managing your Twitter account. Tweetdeck is a favorite among marketers, promoters and companies that need to monitor multiple twitter streams. It is great for monitoring engagement and lists. In fact, I use it!

Twitter also changed their email notifications to be more robust. Now when someone mentions you or gives you a retweet, Twitter will send you a notification to let you know. This is great to be able to keep up with your Twitter via email. Though, if you are like me and don’t like your email box being filled with email notifications, I would suggest turning off the option in your Twitter settings.

These were not the only updates, I am seeing little ones poking their heads out slowly to reveal themselves, like some changes in the search function, and listing people now opens up a new window instead of a drop down menu.

So it was a big week in the Twitterverse, but for many of us these changes are not really affecting the way that we will continue our engagement. But it did answer the question about why so many people were having issues with their Twitter, like their profiles not showing any tweets or showing no followers…it was all the updates.

Now they are done and hopefully things will return to business as usual.

The Adult Trading Card for Misti Dawn is this weeks Friday Feature Photo. Misti is a super sexy tattooed red head. She has a great twitter feed that is very interactive. She is funny and easy to talk to. Her website has an amazing retro gaming theme which made me fall in love with her immediately. Her ATC Card really captures how sexy and vuluptous she is but also shows a wonderfully vulnerable and alluring side to her personality.

Misti great, follow her on Twitter @meowmistidawn, visit her website at MeowMistiDawn.com

Make sure you follow Adult Trading Card on Twitter @ATCCard and visit their website at AdultTradingCardCompany.com

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A good use for True Twit Spam?

 

Woman on a computer saying "I wouldn't mind the spam half as much if they would send me more pictures of naked men."

Spam is unwanted email. Are you sending spam before you send your spam?

Finally a good use for True Twit Validation! As you probably know I do not like True Twit Validation. In my opinion it is the most commonly accepted form of Twitter spam. However, today I received a True Twit email that actually made good use of the application.

True Twit advertises itself as helping you prevent spammers and to keep you from having your DM’s and newsfeed filled with spam bots. However, the only way it does this is if you auto-follow people back. Otherwise someone following you does not affect your spam at all. You cannot receive DM’s from people who you don’t follow nor will they be in your timeline. Only people who you follow are in your timeline.  So now you are the person sending the unwanted DM to the person who is trying to follow you.  Not only are you essentially cock blocking their follow, but you are generally being annoying for no real reason.  But that changed.

I received a True Twit email that said:

Please verify your Twitter account so they can follow me afterwards.

That little bit at the end was the first time I felt a validation email gave me real reason to validate. If you auto-follow people back, you are ensuring that you do not auto-follow bots.  However, you are now giving the person a reason to validate because you are promising a follow back.

I still think that True Twit is spam.  I still think that no one should use it and that the only reason most people do use it is because they get really tired of filling out the stupid CAPTCHAs. There are still many people out there who will never fill out the validation and would rather not follow you than go to True Twit.  So even if you are using it to vet your auto-follows, you are still propagating the spam. In fact, most people think that if you are willing to start off a Twitter relationship with spam, that it is likely you will continue to send spam for as long as I am following you.

If you really need to vet all the people you follow, use a tool like socialoomph.com which lets you do that before following people but without clogging their email box with spam.

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5 Tips for Live Tweeting

Adult Trading Card Diamond Kitty

Feature Friday Photo: They sexy & voluptuous Diamond Kitty.

I am totally tweeting this

Live tweeting is nothing more than tweeting about an event as it is happening.  But it can be a great tool to share your experience and report from an event and about an event.

Events and conferences are the perfect place to tweet live. It is a great way to share your experiences with your followers and get people more involved with what you are doing. Live tweeting also shows that you are relevant and active in current events, and not someone who only tweets in retrospect. Additionally, it is good way to network with other people at the conference.

  1. Hashtags– Most events will have a hashtag associated with the event. Make sure that you use that tag and tag all your tweets from the event with the tag.  This will let people know what you are tweeting about, and where you are tweeting from. Plus other people from the conference will be able to see your tweets and you might be able to set up some networking opportunities.
  2. Tell People– Let people know that you will be live tweeting.  Anyone who is interested in the show, but not there, will be likely to follow your tweets to get a first hand account of what is happening.
  3. Share you pics!– Take pics of the show. Remember a picture says 1000 words and twitter is limited to 140 character tweets.  Pics are a great way to share your experiences from the conference.  Tools like TwitPic are great for posting your pics on Twitter.
  4. Archive your tweets– You can keep a copy of all your tweets from the event by archiving the hashtag.  A great app for this is Twapper Keeper they will track a hashtag for you and create an archive that you can access later. This is great for blogging or being able to go over all the convo’s happening from the show when you have more time to look at what other people were saying.
  5. Live in the now– Don’t get so caught up in tweeting that you take yourself away from what is happening.  Use tools like speech to text to help you type. But mainly, make sure that you are enjoying with is happening right now, because as great a live tweeting is. You can always write about it later!

Diamond Kitty is this weeks Feature Friday Photo.  The Adult Trading Card of her on the beach seemed fitting as we are gearing up for Exxotica Miami. Make sure that you follow her on Twitter @DiamondKittyXXX and ask her for a card!  Also follow @ATCCompany to see who has their own new sexy ATC card!…and they are a lot of fun to tweet with.

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Sexy but Safe for Work?

Tanya Tate as the Green Lantern

Tanya Tate has a site that promotes her SFW content, opening up a whole alternate audience beyond adult.

I recently came across a twitter post about a safe for work blog.  We are use to seeing the #nsfw tag on posts that let us know when something is not safe for work.  Though this is not actually used enough, at least it is used. But what about safe for work?  Many people might ask what the benefit of a safe for work site, blog or content would be. There are a lot of benefits actually.

Tanya Tate has a blog that is specifically SFW. She blogs about conferences that she goes to, shares experiences from her life and  pictures from events.  In fact, Tanya is quite the frequent visitor to comic con’s. She even dresses up as super heroes.  This has gotten her a lot of attention from main stream press, like Life Magazine and Examiner.com

By having a SFW site, like Tanya, not only are you allowing people to safely view your content at any time but you are also opening yourself up to a potential new audience. There are people who might not be initially interested in your adult content but by offering an alternative, you now have the opportunity to introduce them to you.

Part of growing your audience base is by simply introducing yourself to them. Just because they are not looking in adult does not mean they are not interested. Give them other reasons to be interested in you.

Benefits of SFW

  • People can view your content anywhere
    Just because people want to see you naked does not mean they only want to see you naked. Being able to browse your content safely and with confidence that it is SFW can be a big benefit to your audience.
  • Be a tease
    SFW content can let you give teasers about your NSFW content. You can let people know what they can get on your other site and when they are in a location to view it, they will be able to go. But in the mean time think of it as content foreplay.
  • Its all about PR
    If your site only offers NSFW then you might be missing out on some publicity opportunities.  Even blogs and news sites that talk about adult entertainment don’t necessarily post adult content. This blog is a good example. I want people to be able to read this anywhere. Plus I want to be able to pull traffic from traditional, as well as adult, sources. So maintaining SFW content is very important.
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Tweet Dirty to Me at Exxotica Miami

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Getting into Adult A-ZExxotica Miami is right around the corner and I am getting very excited! I am a part of Michael Fattorossi’s Adult from A to Z seminar series at the show.  I am pairing up with Pete Housely from The Naughty Tweet Network for a panel on social media for adult entertainment.

Social media is extremely important if you want to make it is the adult industry.  But doing it right is even more important. We are going to be talking strategy, tips and tricks for using social media to promote your adult business. Learn how to do adult social media right!

Tweet Dirty to Me

Social media is the most effective marketing strategy for any business, but with so much out there it’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed. How much business are you losing because your social media is missing the mark? This talk will help you decide what networks you should use, teach you how to reach your audience, grow your sales, get more clicks to your website and show you how to grow your networks, your reputation, your popularity and your influence. Whether you are a veteran Tweeter or completely confused by tweeting, learn how to leverage the power of social media for you business or brand.

If you are coming to the show you should make sure to come by and see the panel. It will be really informative. Plus it will give you a chance to pick mine and Pete’s brain on social media. This is a chance to ask us anything about social media strategy! We will be sharing our thoughts and tips on how to manage your social media in a way that will actually get you clicks, grow your network and show you what ROI (return on investment) in social media actually means!

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How Sticky are You?

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Naked Woman covered in chocolate holding a strawberry

Is your website just sticky or does it have audience loyalty? Social media builds trust.

Have you seen the recent study was showing that SEO was better at building sticky traffic than social media?. I believe this. When you go to Google and search for a site, you intend to spend time on that site. You are looking for it, and the search engine helps you find it. Boom…sticky.

Social media is not a tool for click-throughs, though you will get them.  It is not a tool for sales, though you will make them. It is not a tool to drive traffic, though you will do that.  Social media is a tool to build relationships with your audience.

This is more than click-throughs and short-term sales. This is more than singular traffic.

When you build a relationship with your audience you are creating:

  • Brand recognition
  • Loyalty
  • Positive customer service
  • Authority
  • Lifetime traffic
  • Trust

“The best part of relationships is they are protectable assets. When someone likes you, trusts you or finds you credible, it’s very hard to take that away.” –Why Social Media Matters

Relationships take time, and this is where studies that look at traffic sources and declare that SEO is more effective fail. They are looking at the one time click.  They are not looking at the lifetime business relationship.

Relationships are based on multiple experiences. They are built from a history of experiences and exposure. The formula is simple; the more you interact the deeper the relationship. And because the company view is built off this relationship, one bad review or blog post is not going to be able to sully that reputation.  Because your reputation is built from interpersonal relationships, it will not be tarnished by anonymous slander.

Yes, SEO is a wonderful tool that everyone should use. However, you are not comparing apples to apples when you compare SEO to social media.  SEO looks at searches. Social media looks at relationships. And let’s face it, when you really like a brand because you tweet and Facebook with them, you don’t need to search for their website because you already know their domain (and studies can’t identify how much direct traffic came from social media followers…yet).

 

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SEO vs. Social Media: The Traffic Throw Down

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Click-throughs and stickiness are two paramount issues for web businesses. Click-throughs are the number of people who click on a link, and stickiness is the amount of time someone stays on your site.  There is always contradictory information about the issues of sticky click-throughs and social media.  Some people say that social media is not as good as traditional SEO.  Some people say that it is better.  I am here to tell you that they are both right.

Xbiz just posted a story reporting that social media generates less traffic than search. When you dig deeper, the breakdown is not as simple as that. There was a huge variance according to industry.  For instance, the study showed that 42% of new visitors to news sites came from social media, but for sports sites it was only 5%. Overall search traffic still dominated the majority of unique visitor traffic, however social media unique visitor traffic, while only 11%, was on the rise.

What Xbiz did not highlight was that the study was not specifically related to Adult, and it does not have any figures that highlight the trends in Adult Industry. It was a look at all web traffic to all kinds of sites.

The study was conducted by Outbrain, a company which provides widgets to publishers, designed to keep readers on their sites longer. What the study also published was the chart of the top traffic sources for websites:

Top 20 Traffic Sources from Outbrain

Notice that Facebook is in the top 5 and Twitter is in the top 10.

What they also did not tell you is there is no mention at all of the Adult Industry. In fact, when you look at the findings it actually looks unlikely that they considered Adult entertainment at all.

Does this make the study irrelevant to Adult? No. It is still relevant to some extent – what it does tell you is that SEO is still an important aspect for creating a strong web presence.  In fact, SEO is relevant for social media as well.  Social media is about relationships; SEO is about clicks.

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I heard it from a Porn Star! News of Osama dominates Social Media

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President Obama Twitter Word Map

A Twitter word map of the iconic President Obama portrait. Created by Jeff Clark

On May 1, Sunday night, President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by a strategic U.S. strike. This news hit the Internet faster than you can believe. It was all over Twitter and Facebook within seconds of the world wide announcement.

Cries of happiness, support, jubilation, horror, anger, and upset were heard as far and as fast as fingers could tweet. Some people just spread the news, others commented on how the world is a better place without him, some were horrified that people were celebrating a man’s death. No matter how you felt about the announcement, social media was giving a world-wide voice to the news and the range of emotions that followed it.

In fact, the questions  “where were you when you heard…” and “how did you hear?” are already being asked all over the net. Mashable immediately launched a “How did you hear about Bin Laden’s death?” poll.

Want to know how I heard? On Twitter from a porn star!

It is true.  It goes to show that Adult stars participate in world events, just like the rest of us. Right now I feel like I am doing a “See, they [fill in space with mundane activity] like the rest of us” bit from the trash magazines like US Weekly. But it is true.  The Adult Industry participates in major world events and social media trends like the rest of us.  So read how the announcement spread across the social webs and know that the Adult world contributed!

The new spread like wildfire throughout the online world.

President Obama’s announcement was streamed live by the White House, and by the end of the speech tweets reached more than 4000 tweets per second.

Within minutes, someone created an “Osama Bin Laden is DEAD” Facebook fan page and within a couple hours of its creation it had gone viral, with more than a quarter of a million fans.

The hashtag #Osama was trending and occupying 18% of Twitter chatter.

On Foursquare, people started swarming at Ground Zero, and for those of you who don’t know what swarming is, it is when a lot of people (usually more than 10) check into a location at the same time.

Locations on Foursquare were being created called “Osama is dead” and “Osama bin Gonathon” allowing people to check in to a world that did not have Osama Bin Laden in it.

This was a monumental event. Because the world community is online, we are able to experience this momentous occasion together. The voices being shared across the various social networks have created a world unified through a historical event and the solidarity of a true global community.

“[T]onight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

– President Obama

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The Reluctant Pornstar

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Elli Nude

Friday Feature Photo: The Sexy Canadian Red-Head, Elli from Ellinude.com

I recently came across an interesting blog, The Reluctant Pornstar. As you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued.  I wondered if it was a blog by a pornstar chronicling her journey through porn, or maybe someone who did erotic photography and was being stigmatized. Perhaps it was a feminist blog about the objectification of women?  What I immediately loved was that I did not know what to expect. What the blog does demonstrate is the power of a good title.

Branding is everything. You can make or break your business and career through it. What this brand made me do was dive into her site so I could learn more.

I discovered that Elli, the Reluctant Pornstar herself, is an adult star. Though, as she will be the first to tell you, she does not identify as one. She has a website that features photos, videos, and webcam of her engaging in sexual acts. Though they mirror a lot of the traditional amateur porn sites, Elli has set herself apart by her non-porn activity.  Besides blogging, she also posts photo essays about everyday life, gardening tips and cooking videos (well, there are also erotic stories).

I have spoken about the importance of being yourself in your branding. Your personality is your biggest asset, and Elli has created a great franchise based around hers.  She is sexy and flirty, a little geeky, witty and generally playful.

Elli NudeSome examples of her reluctant pornstar side, and some of my favorite parts of her website, are her playful videos, like “Flip and Squish Eggs” or “Morning Bum”. I think I like that one because it is so distinctly Canadian.

Elli’s blogs range from everyday life in Vancouver to sexy videos and some of her more salacious exploits. Regardless of the content, they are all distinctly her.

She became the Friday Feature because I wanted to give you an example of how being yourself can be integral to the creation of your personal branding. Elli is able to attract a wide audience because her branding is so unique. The blog allows her to capture both an Adult, and non-adult audience.  Why would you want to capture an audience not looking for Adult content?  Well, if someone likes your blog, and they know that you produce adult content, there is a chance that they will be curious about it. You are more likely to get a longer term subscriber if you capture them with more than just a sexy vid or provocative picture.  If they like YOU then you become the substance behind your product.

Make sure you check out Ellinude.com and follow Eli on Twitter @ElliGirl

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