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Chances are you’re familiar with both StumbleUpon and Digg. Have you ever wished it would be as easy to Digg posts as it was to Stumble from site to site? Well, now it can be. Sub Digger Plus wasn’t created by Digg (so it’s uncertain if using it will get your Digg account in trouble), but it’s a great way to make keeping up with your friends’ Digg submissions. Not only is this tool helpful, it’s not difficult to use. In fact, if you know your Digg username, that’s all you need to enter to start using the tool (which works on Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome browsers.)

With no plugins to download or software to install, Sub Digger Plus makes it simple to easily check out Digg submissions from your friends. After entering your Digg username, you’ll go to a screen with a toolbar on the bottom. Your friends’ submissions will load in the top of the screen. All you have to do is click one button to see the next submission. There’s also a handy list view that’s sortable. Depending on your personal preferences, you can choose to sort the list by Date, Diggs, Title, Submitter, Topic or Read (and any of these options can be sorted in ascending or descending order). This makes it super easy to see what your friends are doing at Digg, and provides you with the opportunity to create a really personalized Digg experience.

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WordPress is one of the most popular open source blogging platforms. Unfortunately, this also seems to make it a popular target for hackers. While keeping your WordPress installation up to date can prevent a lot of potential security breaches, that’s not a guaranteed way to stay safe. Today, I’m going to cover a few steps you can take to give yourself extra layers of protection against hackers and evil robots.

Although these first steps may seem extremely basic, it’s always good to be reminded of the fundamentals. A great example of this was the Twitter happiness fiasco that occurred a couple of months ago. While it did have some entertainment value, it also served as a reminder that even the most basic security measures can be overlooked if you aren’t proactively taking steps to be more secure. Here are a few lessons that can be learned from that fiasco:

Don’t use words from the dictionary for your password

For example, passwords like password or happiness.

Most brute force attacks attempt to gain access by trying a prearranged list of dictionary words. If you choose a password that is not a word from the dictionary, you won’t leave yourself open to this type of attack.

Don’t use passwords that aren’t strong

For example, all lowers case with no numbers or other characters.

What exactly makes a password strong? Strong passwords have the following characteristics:

• Lengthy: Each time you add a character, your password becomes exponentially more difficult to guess.
• A combination of letters numbers and symbols: The more characters the better
• Uses both upper case and lower case letters
• Use a password that is easy for you to remember but difficult for others to guess

Microsoft has some more detailed tips on how to create strong passwords that are easy to remember but difficult for others to guess.

Whatever you do, don’t allow UNLIMITED login attempts!

In the case of the Twitter fiasco, the hacker actually launched an automated brute force attack which ran overnight while he was sleeping. The WordPress Limit Login Attempts Plugin is an ideal way for WordPress users to protect themselves from such brute force attacks. It works using both IP addresses and cookies. It can be set to notify you via email when someone has been locked out due to four failed login attempts. The first time four failed attempts occur the user or potential hacker is locked out for twenty minutes. After the next four failed attempts, the lockout last for twenty-four hours. These are the default settings, but they are fully customizable.

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Last Tuesday (May 19th), Digg held their latest Townhall. After talking about upcoming Digg events, they began answering questions from users, and a screenshot of the first question they answered is below:

When presented with this question, Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose stated that they were planning on shutting down this feature in a few days. They said that while they realized this was a controversial decision, they had decided to replace it with new sharing options. The two sharing options they mentioned were Facebook and Twitter, and they said that these changes would make the sharing process simpler and more streamlined.

Digg stuck to this promise, and on Tuesday of this week (May 26th), they made the official announcement on their blog that they were removing the shout feature. In addition to discussing the ability to quickly share via Facebook or Twitter, the Digg post also stated that while they have removed the “Blog This” feature, they still have a shortcut for sharing via email (as you can see from the screenshot below):

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Last week, I was browsing through some Search Engine Journal posts from last year when I came across the following post by Ann Smarty – SheerSEO : Another Way To Track Your Google Rankings. After reading her post and noticing that the tool had some very interesting features, I decided that I wanted to try it out for myself. Although Ann wrote a great post, it was written nearly a year ago, so I thought it would be useful to share my more recent experience with SheerSEO.

Since I do all my work on an iMac, the first feature that I liked about this tool is that it is web based, so it will run on Mac and Linux systems in addition to Windows.

After exploring the tool for awhile, the thing that really started to stand out in my mind was the amount of SheerSEO features that can really be useful for SEO agencies. To begin with, you can see all of your current positions in one table:

However, as their demo shows, one of the features that could provide a lot of value for an SEO agency is their tracking of historical positions. Clients expect to see progress, andSheerSEO makes it easy to show it to them:
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What is a discovery?

You discover a page when you are the first to submit it to StumbleUpon. You can see the member who discovered the page as well as the date when it was discovered to the right of the submission page (http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/url-of-the-submitted-page):

What is a category?

A page is discovered in one of the multiple categories. The category the page is submitted to determines who will see it. StumbleUpon is based on the relevance mechanism: each member is categorized based on his interests – these interests are determined based on the preferences specified by him and also based on the member’s browsing behavior (topics of the articles the member usually stumbles and reviews).

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photo credit: dimnikolov

They say ‘Owning a Blog is No Longer a Luxury but rather a Necessity’. How true!

And so is social media marketing.

As the real focus of this ebook is on social media and in the true spirit of it, let’s take a look at the meaning of blogging from the s-o-c-i-a-l m-e-d-i-a perspective.

Selling – Blogging opens a window of countless opportunities. One of those is the opportunity to sell your product and/or service. Most bloggers, if not all, are online entrepreneurs who blog passionately for money.

What it takes is trust, credibility and the right product. Just be sure that the kind of product/service you want to sell on your blog should be relevant, of value and could really make a difference in their life.
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photo credit: danksy
LinkedIn Guide:

If you have not figured it out by now, LinkedIn is a phenomenal tool. The possibilities really are endless, and if I can become successful from using it, then anyone can. But somehow, people just don’t understand why it’s useful, and how to use it to achieve their professional goals. I know I was unsure about how to use it, and in the first few months I still couldn’t figure out how to import my contacts. Sound familiar?

What does it mean to generate success on LinkedIn?

Success is determined on each individuals professional goals; finding a job, driving massive traffic to your website, generating quality targeted leads, increasing sales of any kind, finding a business partner, finding investors, promoting a company/product/event/service, finding the right service provider, becoming a globally recognized industry leader, and generating more income.

If the above paragraph describes something you are looking to achieve, then read on to learn about how to do this on LinkedIn.

How I Started Out

When I first got “LinkedIn” I didn’t have a job, had zero products or services to provide, and had very little work experience. I was a twenty four year old struggling professional athlete without a college degree and just got out of the hospital from a near life threatening surgery. I would say it was one of the lowest moments of my life, and I wasn’t sure what the future would hold.

One day, however, my most trusted mentor sent me an invitation to join LinkedIn. This was the first time I had heard about the business-networking site, but I figured if my mentor was on it, I knew it was something I should be using as well. I was right. I noticed the potential when I first “linked in”, and the opportunities continue to overflow in abundance today.

The more I figured out how to use LinkedIn, the more opportunities unfolded, and it came to the point where there were to many to manage.
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When I was asked to write a piece entitled: “How to Succeed on YouTube” I was forced to admit that the success I have enjoyed online has been due more to the actions of others than my own. I set a goal of achieving 1 Million video views in my first 100 days on the site and was lucky enough to hit that goal on the 83rd day (which was ironically Christmas morning — Thanks Santa!) and by the time the 100th day came around, I had over 1.5 Million combined video views! I credit the YouTube community for having supported me in achieving this goal, but there are some little things you can do to better the chances of your videos being seen by those who will help you achieve your own goals. Because I have spent more time than I am willing to admit on YouTube, I have a few thoughts on what makes for successful videos and channels. I have broken down this article into two parts. The first part touches on what I consider to be the most popular videos, and the second will cover little things I think you can do to help your videos get the views you are hoping for.

Part I: Popular Videos Elicit A Reaction.

All popular videos have something in common: they elicit a reaction from the viewers. These videos make you laugh, make you smile, make you sing and dance, teach you something, or just simply make you say “Wow, that is amazing!” Such videos come in all forms and lengths, and include the following: (more…)

With the seemingly endless number of social sites popping up all over the web, venturing into the world of Social Media and community voting sites can be an exercise in masochism, if you’re not careful. Every site has its own community, its own culture, its own etiquette and its own set of rules & regulations that users are expected to adhere to.

Unlike many social voting based sites, like Digg and Reddit – which tend to have an inherent hostility toward the search marketing industry – Sphinn, which was started by the team at Search Engine Land, caters specifically to the Internet marketing community. Much like other voting sites, the ultimate goal is to generate enough votes to make it to the “Hot Topics” page, which will expose the content to the biggest Sphinn audience.

Being that Sphinn was created by, is moderated by and its community is made up of Internet marketers, it’s no place for the faint of heart. As a rule, the community is somewhat suspicious of newcomers initially and there are some dues to pay before you’re welcomed into the fold. Spammers, the thin-skinned and whiners need not apply. Don’t believe me? Here’s a taste of what my first few weeks at Sphinn were like… (more…)