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From One to Two and Back to One

by Ari Herzog on November 6, 2009 · 0 comments

Columns, I refer.

Why must your blog be designed with two or three columns? Everyone’s blog looks like that! I keep experimenting with a single-column look and I keep nixing and changing it. I think it’s time to keep the single view, don’t you?

I awoke this morning to a 2-column design at AriWriter. I will sleep with this current look of a single column.

Single column view

The sidebar content, albeit with elements truncated, is at the bottom of this page.

Chris Pearson, developer of the Thesis theme for Wordpress that powers this blog design, explains some of the background and reasoning for why I did what I did:

I wrote about the importance of minimalism 15 months ago–before I shifted it. Now, it’s back. You like?

If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Why Joining 38,943 People is Bad

by Ari Herzog on November 5, 2009 · 9 comments

Copyblogger is among the blogs I’ve read for about 18 months. Not every day, not every week; but it’s always among my list of subscribed and go-to sites for useful advice. I’m a Brian Clark groupie.

His writing aside, I don’t approve of his focusing on the number of people following him on Twitter as a reason why you should, too.

Follow Copyblogger on TwitterBrowsing through some of the people who are currently following @copyblogger, there are more sincere people like Marko Saric than unsavory characters. But by focusing on the aggregate and not selected testimonials, there is a greater chance of an assumption, such as what this blog post is about.

The caveat is by linking his blog to the real-time number of people who follow him, Brian is directly suggesting you should follow those people, too. After all, if you click the link to “join us,” you’d be grouping yourself with everyone else.

Still with me?

Join john1b1 and follow copyblogger

Join john1b1 and follow copyblogger

If someone like John Betholly with a nondescript Twitter username like john1b1 or James Christopher with roadrunner1416 or Traffic Gambit appeals to you, then follow @copyblogger right here.

I’d argue the people who follow Brian opt to do such for their own reasons. Don’t follow Brian because of what other people do. Don’t follow Brian because I suggest you do. Follow Brian because you want to.

However, if you’d be more swayed to click a link because 38,000 other people are in front of you, then ignore my advice and click the link.

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Will Social Media Pay Off?

by Ari Herzog on November 3, 2009 · 8 comments

I’ve lived a double online life since June 2009.

Over the past four months, I’ve maintained two blogs–this place where you read my strategies and tips on social media marketing–and another site where I write more sporadic but no less prolific about my campaign for city council.

In cahoots with my campaign blog, I built campaign outposts on Facebook (here) and Twitter (here). With increasing intensity every week, and then every day, I focused more on the campaign social media sites than my so-called business ones.

At at the end of the day–Election Day–the people who go the polls will determine my fate on the city council January 1. There’s no denial social media has played a part in recent months, but to what extent, the next 21 hours will tell…

Vote Ari Herzog for City Council

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Reviewing Twitterville

Nov. 2, 2009

“Wherever you live, chances are you think your government could do a better job,” writes Shel Israel in the opening sentence of chapter 13 of Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods.
Shel explains the background to the book’s title, published earlier in 2009, in the introduction, some 200 pages earlier:
Twitterville connotes a [...]

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Twitter Grading Over 30 Days

Nov. 1, 2009

One month ago, I explained why applications like Twitter Grader were meaningless, including the following example:
Returning to twitter.grader.com/ariherzog now, I see:
Let’s see what happens in another month.

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iPhone, uPhone, We All Scream For..

Oct. 31, 2009

Have you heard the one about the 3-year-old and the iPhone?
The Boston Globe shares the following video report:

Call me a critic, but how is this news? Kids have always preferred flashy objects over dull ones. How is bubble wrap — the translucent-like film — anything but dull in comparison?
Perhaps the better analogy is giving a [...]

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Social Media: Banning vs Blocking

Oct. 29, 2009

I am sorry I have to write this but it appears some of the leading technology journals are unable to agree on the difference between a ban and a block. If I didn’t know better, some editors might think the two verbs are synonyms.

The facts
On October 6, 2009, IT staffing firm Robert Half International released [...]

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