If you are a returning guest to our site, you may have noticed a slight change to our appearance. A few months prior it was decided that Evolution Freelance Media would no longer remain open, as have refined our goals. So without further adue, I present to you the brand new Web 2.0 consulting group and Web based magazine.

Play This Media.

So that was sort of uneventful.

Why the change?

-In 2005, Play This Magazine and Evolution Freelance Media (EFM) were created to serve startups, individuals with little to no funding and non-profits. In 2011 we plan on retaining the clients we have assisted over the years, but with a new goal: Web 2.0, social media and Gov 2.0 communications. Whether you need to start a Twitter feed for your brand, or create a strategic plan for utilizing these sites Play This Media will be there to help.

What does this mean?

-Essentially this means EFM is growing up. Previously we connected people to great designers, developers and communicators, but now we want to focus on directly empowering you. While we retain the same resources and list of fantastic people in the field, we will not seek individuals who need assistance with social media. Play This Magazine will still continue to exist. The magazine will now focus our articles in a more serious tone, with your requests in mind. Previously we would post humorous images and other content geared towards gaining traffic, but there is no stability in that. Our experience and specific articles geared towards those wanting to know more about social media will speak for itself.

Twitter at first seems like a menial microblogging tool where people talk about Justin Bieber and post what they ate for dinner. At the same time, many social media sites also look like this. For example, Reddit at first glance is filled with many Internet memes and funny images, but when you delve deep into the social structure you find real communities providing great information. Thus we find ourselves at Twitters feet.

From the inception of your first Twitter account, you will probably friend some celebrities and reply to their tweets in hopes that they will respond. They probably won’t. Perhaps you will take advantage of the friend finding tools and eventually get your first follower. It will probably be spam.

You will begin by posting relevant things to you, but leave out hashtags or anything that can contribute to an online community. What’s a hashtag? It’s what attaches most tweets to a conversation or community, such as #projectv (the hashtag I created for a charitable non-profit). Leaving out simple things like a hashtag essentially promises your low followed account to produce tweets that get thrown out into space, perhaps one day to be found by aliens. Days go by, no, weeks go by and you still have no real followers and you begin to pester your friends to get on Twitter. Some will, but most won’t because they have done the same thing you are right now.

So how do you get those fabled hundred or thousand follower counts? Be yourself and stop talking about what you eat.

Posting a message on Twitter can alter the mood of those following you. Sure that may sound pompous, but your followers don’t care what you’re eating and that is not a factor (unless you’re a popular foodie like Anthony Bourdain). Whether you are posting links to a relevant audience like I do for govWin (government contracting and new government technology news) or simply posting impromptu images because you are a photographer, your audience cares.

It’s great that we can find relevant articles to our audience, but you have to show there is actually a person behind these messages. Your follower count heavily depends on your ability to socialize on these social media sites, go figure. As a general rule, you don’t want to spam tweets and messages all day, or people may get annoyed by you. In particular, if you are covering a live event, people who are uninterested in the event can receive hundreds of messages, and may unfollow you due to the high activity.

Do your regular numbers matter? No. Sadly the ratio of followers to those following you does though. If you have a higher number of followers you are in good standing. Generally if you are following more it looks like you are a spammer, or just not understanding the Twitter game. Thus the social media stock market.

Aside from providing relevant and interesting tweets, it’s important to regularly maintain your follower list. At times you may find people on your account as inactive from months ago, and they are no longer worth following. Sure they may come back, but it’s just as easy to follow them again. On a regular basis you will see your follower number raise and lower, especially as you gain over 500 of them. The majority of fluctuations in your follower number are due to spammers following you and being deleted. In other occurrences people attempt to follow you for a short period of time in hopes you follow them back, and then remove you (this is generally a shady practice).

The important people that actually pay attention to your feed though are the ones you need to pay attention to. If you are alienating your followers, you will see a major loss. If you post something agreeable to them, they are more likely to retweet that comment, and others may follow you. There is no real trick to gaining followers, it’s important that you continue on a steady path of conversational microblogging.

Just remember that it’s not the follower number that matters, it’s the quality of those following. You can have hundreds of followers on Twitter, but if none of them reply, retweet or mention you, they are just dust in the wind.

So what is your stock price?

Facebook crashed yesterday, and Twitter was hijacked by poor security programming. Now what?

Facebook is generally a very reliable social media site when it comes to taking large loads. Twitter, not so much. One massive event that occurs anywhere on Earth will more than likely unleash the fail whale. What happens when both of these sites crash in the same week though? Quite possibly babies, or as Dolly says, “Facebook users are roaming the streets in tears, shoving photos of themselves in people’s faces and screaming ‘Do YOU LIKE THIS? DO YOU??’”

Jokes abound from both social media sites, but the reality is, many people do rely on these sites to communicate with one another, in particular businesses. We may not have suitable flying cars to rely on, but people are accepting new technologies for communication. More importantly, some companies also strictly rely on word-of-mouth advertising through social media sites, but what happens if they all come crashing down?

Make a backup plan.

Like all grand projects, programs or strategic plans, you should always have a backup. Whether that be utilizing your official website to communicate with members or customers, or even sending out a blast e-mail on how people can contact you efficiently.

As Twitter has been growing exponentially, there should be something in place to help your followers (especially for businesses) feel out the situation. Breaking your ties of communication can lead to a large shortfall, and that can be minimized with appropriate planning.

What happened to Twitter

Twitter was recently hijacked by a line of Java script that would allow users to to alter tweet feeds font colors, and popup window prompts or websites (most were porn). A young individual accidentally found the issue, much like the forced following error that allowed users to force anyone on Twitter to follow them. There were hardly any reports of malicious viruses being spread, as most of the issues were pranks.

Twitter had quickly resolved the issue, but the site was still functional through third party applications and the mobile site.

Facebook failed due to poor coding as well. You can read more about it on their engineer release statement.

Blogging for non-profit organizations require strong guidelines to yield great results. We’ve drawn out the more important areas.

Non-profits require a personal touch, and consistent updates to keep supporters in the know. The following guidelines will help anyone just starting to blog for a non-profit. EFM is currently supporting CVHJP, so this has terms relating to their activities, but are interchangeable. Just remember, always remain factual and those who believe in your cause will support your work.

The Internet is exponentially greater than any other source to find out about a person, but one wrong word and it’s over.

Carl Herold, Programmer extraodrinaire, has been providing free online classes to help people learn more about programming. His first course, presented in 2009 on the social media site Reddit, has led to over 6,000 students to follow his courses.

In addition to providing invaluable information for free, he has been a programmer for 15 years and owned several businesses. More importantly, Herold is self-taught and has never attended college.

On June 3, 2005, Herold was labeled as a con artist because an unhappy customer posted a complaint on Ripoff Report and as a result any time his name is searched for on Google, it is the first item that appears.

Herold’s case is a familiar sting when it comes to the Internet. Websites like Ripoff Report will yield top search results because they are considered high traffic sites. Even though Herold has made a clear case that the customer was simply lacking the proper contact information to get a refund, the client would not remove the report. Additionally, the issue at hand was because the client could not get a refund of $29.95.

Herold has tried several times to have Ripoff Report to remove the false accusation, and their website clearly states that they are not responsible for what other people have said (reducing the possibility of being sued for libel). Herold has now turned to the popular social media site, Reddit. They have often come together to create works of genius, create relationships that last a life time and occasionally some grand humor.

Reddit users have decided to search for Carl Herold’s name and his business, tweet it on Twitter and provide him SEO suggestions to improve his websites ranking. Currently the results of Reddit users hard work can be shown above, as his programming website is now number two, as it was ranked number seven earlier in the day.

Carl Herold’s website provides free programming to everyone.

[Herold's site][Ripoff Report]

Prevent this from happening to you

Although Reddit has generously devoted its time to assist Herold, this situation can happen to anyone or any organization. SEO optimizers will often charge people for this type of assistance, and it will still not push a persons name to the top of the Goolge’s search results.

Everything on the Internet is open.

You may have a private profile, a locked Twitter feed and even password protected blog posts. No matter what you think, these can be accessed, copied and spread over the Internet. A fine example of such is the spread of individuals personal images.

Example:

A girl sends her boyfriend a nude image of herself through Facebook or text message. They break up and he decides the image should no longer remain private. He sends the image to all of his friends and posts it on the Web. A week later the girl notices that her face is now on an adult websites advertisement. Sadly situations like this occur often, and can break a persons reputation for years to come.

Social Media is exception for promoting a person or business, but it can also break them. Be aware of anything you decided to display on the Web, because what may appear to be an image of you drinking at a BBQ, may be a reason for a future employer not to hire you. It’s difficult to say what information and images of you will appear at the top of the results, so it’s important to reduce the likelihood of anything negative ever appearing in general.

Protect your Facebook account, be careful what you say on Twitter and try not to send nude images to your partner.

Evolution Freelance Media

Evolution Freelance Media (EFM) provides free communication assistance for all your social media needs. We are a non-profit group that creates strategic marketing and communication plans, press releases and assists with SEO optimization.

*Editors note – The information Herold has provided has been proven to be factual and is support by the dates on the Ripoff Report. At times people will spam Reddit and other social media sites, and essentially cry wolf for their 15 minutes of fame. Herold’s situation is very real and he has given back to the community, in turn the community has decided to support him.

Tweet Tweet

Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and even Craigslist are all sites that can lead to great benefits, but you must protect yourself.

Much like having a debit or credit card, these tools are extremely helpful and convenient. You wouldn’t just give a person  your pin code or credit card data would you? The most important thing about social networking sites is being in the know. A rather tragic event occurred on May 11, 2010, when a father of two boys decided to sell a diamond ring on Craigslist. Rather than meeting at a public location, he gave the soon to be murderers his home address, which resulted in the loss of his life.

Facebook

Obviously Facebook has been all over the news lately, especially about their lack of security as they become more open. It’s very simple to simply blame Mark Zuckerberg, but Facebook is no longer under his thumb. Recently Facebook has once again initiated a push to make all information on the site readily available to the pubic. Even worse for Facebook’s image, is the released private messages held between Mark and an undisclosed person.

Mark: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Mark: Just ask.
Mark: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Mark: People just submitted it.
Mark: I don’t know why.
Mark: They “trust me”
Mark: Dumb fucks.

Regardless of what Mark used to say and was is clearly evident in how Facebook currently runs, there are still ways to protect your information. Also, the reason why a majority of these privacy concerns are coming into play is simply because Facebook is spreading it’s roots in many websites with their new “Like” feature.

The information Facebook is collecting for free, is equivalent to what ad agencies pay millions, if not billions per year to collect. Whether or not you want Facebook to gather this intelligence and then deliver you ads is up to how much information you place on their site.

Frankly as a person with a marketing background, I could care less. Ads are easily ignored or blocked, but the simply face remains, don’t put things online anywhere that you don’t want people to see. Prime example, Mark’s instant message conversation.

Protecting Yourself on Facebook

Don’t worry about changing your password every 30 days, because a good one will already be  hard enough to crack. The biggest issue with people gaining access to your account is through phishing. If someone sends you a strange link in a Facebook message and it brings you to a login screen, it is more than likely a phishing site and just stole any information you provided it.

Phishing sites work by playing on peoples ignorance. By being in the know, you will greatly reduce any issues that could arise on any social networking site. Example: www.facebook.com is a proper domain. www.facebook.omnom.com  is a possible phishing site. Any slight alterations to a domain name will mean you are on a separate application.

Screen shot of EvO's Facebook page

Seen above is a simple screen shot of EvO’s Facebook page. You will already notice it looks pretty much live everyone else’s; however, when anyone actually views it, it will look like the picture below.

What non-friends see

What everyone else sees on your Facebook account, or your public information matters a great deal. As you can see above, it just simply provides where I work, my grad school and that I live in Washington DC. All of this is basic information that I do in fact want online, so Google can pick it up for future employers and companies looking to place ads on our site (so they know I’m not such some strange hacker stealing money).

Public profiles, not a good idea

Unfortunately for our friend Jeet (by friend we mean we have no idea who this guy is) simply stumbling upon his profile provides far more information that anyone probably would want. Not only do we know what type of boxers the kid is wearing, we also can see that hey may be illiterate and having trouble with the ladies. Sorry Jeet.

Privacy tab

To access your privacy information, mouse over “Account” and down to “Privacy Settings” and the profile information or contact information. From here you will want to lock down everything you want to keep private. Even if your friends are trustworthy on Facebook, it doesn’t mean their account can’t be compromised to steal your information.

Granted there is a good chance this sounds like paranoia, but honestly if you have images of you getting hammered in college and end up running for some small town position, chances are you have already  doomed yourself; of course it couldn’t hurt to be transparent anyways.

Placing your friends in specific groups will also help you use all of Facebook’s tools without being too paranoid. If you have a group for your close friends, it’s easy to provide them with all of your information while locking out your old high school chums.

We will go into placing your contacts into groups next week and how to reduce divulging to much information on Twitter. I’m personally not a great example of locking down social networking sites because I prefer to remain transparent, aside from the pictures of keg stands done at Georgia Southern (if the Pope visited he would have done it too). It’s life people, try to relax and use common sense, even if it’s not that common.

If you have any particular issues with social networking security, e-mail us at owner@play-this.org. An EFM associate will be happy to provide free information to anyone looking to increase their security and ability to use the Web.

[MSNBC]

Tweet Tweet

Play This is all about bettering yourself through knowledge, EFM has now partnered to write a series of marketing article.

Starting from Scratch

A basic and rather important rule that comes in handy when starting to brand yourself, a new company or the like is to know your market. That being said, you must write or market yourself to your audience.

Not Ted's Bacon Fries

Example: Ted’s Bacon Fries

All though one of the more popular of Internet memes at the current time, Ted will have to market his bacon fries outside of the meme market.

A Website like Reddit or Geekologie will often take hold of new creative products like Ted’s Bacon Fries, which will also help boost rankings on his website selling the item. The readers will more than likely not actually buy the product though. Sure Baconaise was tested on the Daily Show, but that resulted in a review stating it was essentially vomit.

A product as unique as bacon fries would better be sold on sites who truly enjoy bacon.

Jokes aside, you must fully support your audience, interact with them and give them what they want. This is a consumers market after all and forming a trusted brand takes years, unless you are TheOatmeal, who is headed up by a Internet marketing guru anyways.

Start off small

You don’t need to immediately join Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and every other social networking site at the start as you will find yourself being stretched thin. Before marketing yourself to Web 2.0 sites on a vast span, try to create a time table that you can implement to devoted updates and customer responses (a customer doesn’t have to be someone who purchases something, it can be a reader, contributor or even friends and family).

Pick one site to start with and expand as needed, although it couldn’t hurt to reserve your product/company name for later use.

Ignore the allure of Web 2.0

Start with a simple product Website and ensure it’s complete before you market it. One of the easiest site creators, WordPress, can be used by anyone and leaves a lot of creative flexibility. Do not use terrible publishers like FrontPage, they will never bring in the right crowed. Using are tutorials [Creating a cheap website, Part two, not getting fined for endorsed articles, how to write an article that doesn't suck] will help you set up the site and EFM will even personally assist you if you e-mail them.

Once you have successfully built a website, test it out on friends and family. Try to get the brutally honest ones because the more you can fix from the start the better, as large changes after the wheels are going full speed will cause a split audience (Facebook’s current privacy concerns are a great example of this).

Our free green friendly print edition is now available. Free Xbox Live contest inside!

To download our free pdf/print version of Play This Magazine, either check out our Google Documents viewer or just download it from the main page where you see our green Play This logo (show above).

Currently the green friendly magazine will be a four page tabloid each month featuring our latest and greatest. If you would like to submit an article to us for print, please send an e-mail to us at owner@play-this.org.

A ever so small version of our print magazine offers exclusive articles and a chance to win a free month of Xbox Live Gold. The contest starts officially right now and will end on April 1.

A special thanks to those of who you continue to follow Play This and submit great work!

Play This is all about our readers and what they want to read, therefore we are bringing a blog to better us all!

The Realistic Nutritionist will be writing articles on how to remain healthy during every day life. From taking the stairs and ditching the elevator or eating smaller portions, she will be giving you all the advice you need to remain healthy.

She doesn’t cover ridiculous diet plans or working out till it hurts, just good health standards from a realistic approach.

Her new site will be in full swing by the end of March so check back soon and get to know our newest addition.

Our second site will be devoted to site building tutorials and other various social media marketing tips. Evolution Freelance Media (EFM) still offers it’s service free of charge to anyone who would like to build a Website, promote their brand and find great connections for custom graphics, logos and designs.

It’s Play This magazine’s first official birthday at midnight, so lookout for another give away!Tomorrow night we will post a random gift that you can win for being loyal followers of Play This magazine. It will be something relatively stupid, perhaps uber awesome, but it’s free.

Happy birthday!