Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

January 16, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 87 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Opinions, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Lenses, Twitter, Webhosting, WordPress 

This is a question that I have been asking myself for months.

Today, I created a new TwitterStorm (Twttrstrm.com) asking Which is better for building an online business? Site Build It! or WordPress? Why?

What’s a TwitterStorm? This is a new site powered by Squidoo. Now you can ask a question of your Twitter followers and easily gather all their answers in one spot.

I know that the majority of people who will see this post are probably happy WordPress users. I’m one, too.

Still, after years of building websites and blogging on a lot of platforms, I still keep coming back to thinking Site Build It! is a better choice for building a business website.

Is it better to blog or build?

When Ken Evoy first raised this question, I was leaning towards blogging and disagreed with some of the things he said about it. Now, however, after months of blogging, I’m not as in favor of WordPress as I once was, especially when building multiple blogs.

As part of my goals for 2009, I’ve decided to do more to promote local businesses in Murphy, NC. I already have several blogs and websites related to Murphy and Cherokee County, NC. I’m really not happy with any of them.

I’m considering mothballing all of them except for my Murphy, NC 28906 blog, which needs serious updating. First off, I have to upgrade to WordPress 2.7, change the theme, add plugins, add widgets, and then I’m faced with finding things to write about, in addition to updating the blog software whenever necessary.

I can probably get the blog to where I want it in a couple of days without too much of a problem, because I’ve been doing this a long time and know what I want to do. I’m going to change it and fashion that blog after this one.

One of the problems with blogs is always having to manage the software and that takes away time and energy from actually writing content.

My Act On Your Dream! site is powered by Site Build It! and has been sadly neglected over the last year or more. Now that I can devote full-time to building my business, I can put more effort into building it into the site I have planned. Still, even with little work on my part, it continues to attract visitors and makes a nice profit.

There are lots of things wrong with that site, however. I’ve only built a small fraction of what I have planned for it, and there are a couple of main reasons for that.

For over six years, I was my Mom’s full-time caretaker and the duties associated with that took precedence over everything else. I am happy that I was able to care for her so long when she needed it.

The second reason is that I wasted a lot of time and effort testing a lot of different ways to build websites. I’ve lost track of how many different blogging platforms and content management systems I’ve tested. What do I have to show for it? A lot of neglected or abandoned blogs in my wake. Of all the blogs I’ve started, there are only two or three that I’m going to continue updating.

What do I do with the others? Some of them get traffic and even earn a profit. Do I delete them and redirect the domain to a page on a site I’ll keep? Or, do I just throw them out with the rest of the clutter and delete them and then let the domain expire?

It’s hard enough to build traffic to a site. I really don’t like the idea of just deleting a site that actually gets visitors.

Is it better to keep the domain and put up a static page explaining that the blog has been taken down and link to one of my related sites, or is it best to just let the domain expire and forget about it?

Being a packrat, I tend to want to do the former, but I’m thinking this is a good time to declutter my online life as I unclutter my offline world.

I continue asking myself this question: Why do I have so many blogs?

I think the main answer is that the cost of entry is so low that it’s easy to throw up a blog on the spur of the moment and just as easy to lose interest in it somewhere down the line.

I already have a reseller account on HostGator, so I can add a new domain for basically no cost, except for registering the domain. So, there’s little to stop me from testing an idea.

But, I look at those blogs and consider that I am paying over $500 per year just for domain registrations. For that amount, I can get two subscriptions to Site Build It!

I’ve already decided that I’m going to buy a new subscription to SBI to build a new site promoting businesses in Murphy, NC, because only SBI provides all the tools I need to do it right. That means that I’m going to be deleting several sites that I started over the last few years. I hate to do it, because they’re ranked well in the search engines, but I’m sure I can get page one listings on the keywords I want with a new site powered by Site Build It. I know, because I’ve tested it.

So, all of this boils down to my dithering over deciding what to do this year. When it all boils down to the essentials, the only real sites I have that I should keep and maintain would be this blog, Act On Your Dream!, Murphy, NC 28906, and a new SBI site for Murphy.

I’ll probably keep JohnDilbeck.com, but it will be trimmed to a much, much smaller size.

Of course, I’ll continue to maintain my brother’s site, Georgia Drag Racing. There’s not as much to do on that site now that he’s unable to continue building it as he wants. Still, it gets a lot of visitors and there are a lot of people interested in the subject.

I’ll also keep a couple of communities I created on ning.com.

I have a couple of forums that I’ve been trying to build for a couple of years, but they aren’t gaining any traction, so now may be a good time to shut them down, too.

So, in looking at all my sites, blogs, forums, and communities, I can probably drop the number from over 60 to just a half-dozen or so and actually accomplish more with less effort. I don’t know this for sure, but that’s the direction I’m leaning.

When I build a site with Site Build It, I make a commitment to my own success by paying the $300 upfront for an annual subscription. I just don’t have that commitment when I create another free site somewhere.

I often wonder how many other people have gone through these same experiences. Have you?

I’ve read many messages on the members-only SiteSell forum where SBI webmasters tell their stories of floundering around until they find Site Build It and finally concentrate on building a successful business website.

On the other hand, I’ve read many posts on blogs and forums from people who feel that WordPress offers them the best set of features for the lowest cost.

All I know for sure is that I have gone through my testing and learning phase, and I’m ready to implement what I’ve learned.

One of the keys to success is to focus on what you want to do and then put all your effort into manifesting what you imagine. I just don’t believe that can be done when we try to do too much.

I’m really having a hard time making this decision. Part of me wants to simplify everything and focus on affiliate marketing and promoting local businesses. Part of me doesn’t want to lose all the other sites I’ve started. I have to make this decision and implement it, soon.

I welcome your comments, advice, and suggestions. I value the opinions of the people who read this blog.

Who knows? I may have a bunch of domains to sell or give away.

What do you think? Join the Site Build It! or WordPress? twitter storm and share your opinion.

Leave any other comments you’d care to share here.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Twitter Grader – find local Twitter elite

January 13, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 9 Comments
Filed under: Communities, Social Networking, Twitter, Web Services, Western North Carolina 

This turned out to be an interesting morning. I just spent several hours doing something that wasn’t even close to being on my to-do list, but it worked out well.

It started out innocently enough.

Brian Hawkins left a comment and I went to visit his blog. I was reading his Extreme Ezine Makes The Grade post and it reminded me of Twitter Grader.

After visiting Brian’s profile page on Twitter Grader, I went and had a look at my Twitter Grader profile page.

I had been there sometime in the past, but never really paid a lot of attention to the site. I’m somewhat leery of sites that tell us how much our sites are worth and how we rank for whatever they’re covering.

This morning, however, I stopped and really looked over my profile page.

One thing I noticed is that the link next to the “Full Name” label is a link to my Twitter profile. That certainly makes it easy to follow someone.

I also noticed that it had a link to the Twitter elite in Murphy, NC. Of course, I had to visit that page.

When I visited the page, it turns out that I am the Twitter elite in Murphy. I’m the only one listed on the page. I guess that’s one of the benefits of living in a small town.

It’s also one of the benefits of listing your town and state in your Twitter profile, if you live in the USA. I’m not sure how it works if you live elsewhere.

It also is a good opportunity for others who live in Murphy to establish their presence by starting to use Twitter regularly.

I wondered who would be listed as the Twitter elite in Asheville, NC.

I found a list of 50 people and visited each of their Twitter profiles. I think I followed about 20 of them.

This is a good way to find other proficient Twitter users in your local area and to meet the ones with similar interests.

But the twisting path I followed this morning continued along to places I’d never seen.

One of the Twitter elite from Asheville had just joined a Twitter Group for Asheville, NC and I went to take a look at the group.

When I noticed the #asheville hashtag code for the group, something clicked.

If you’ve been following my blog for the last few days, you’re already aware that I’ve been looking at ways to use Twitter to promote what’s happening here in Murphy, NC. I’ve been experimenting with the #MurphyNC hashtag.

So, I read the FAQs at TwittGroups and decided to create a group for Murphy.

There was only one thing to do before creating the group.

In December 2007, I created a half-dozen communities on Ning.com, but closed all of them in June 2008 for reasons I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that it really pays to read the terms and conditions of a site before putting a half-year of effort into it.

When I was fully aware of the terms, I resurrected one of the communities for Squidoo Marketing and have been enjoying sharing with others in the community for the last six months.

One of the other communities I’d started was for Murphy, NC. This morning, I checked to see if the subdomain I’d previously used was available. It was, so I reopened the community.

Then, it was time to create the TwittGroups group for Murphy.

All of this took a few hours and it opens the door to much more work in the near future, but part of this was already in my plans for this year.

I’m not going to do anything with the Murphy community on Ning until I line up one or more businesses to sponsor the site. For the last few years, I’ve been promoting the area and some of the businesses for free, but it’s time to stop doing that.

As soon as I’ve lined up at least one sponsor for the site, I’ll start rebuilding it.

This time, however, there will be more tools thrown into the mix, including Twitter.

If you are in Murphy, NC, and you are a Twitter user, come and join the group for Murphy.

If you’re not in Murphy, you may find that Twitter Grader and TwittGroups may be tools you’ll want to try out, especially if you’re promoting a local area.

As with all experiments, part of this may prove to be worthwhile and part may be a waste of time. I won’t know for sure until I’ve worked on it for a few months.

Thanks, Brian, for linking to your TwitterGrader profile page. It made for an interesting morning!

Act on your dream!

JD

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Celebrate National DeLurking Week – leave a comment

January 12, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 27 Comments
Filed under: Aweber Autoresponders, Blogging, Marketing 

I have my Macintosh set up with multiple accounts that are optimized for particular tasks. When I sign into one account, it opens with a predetermined set of applications waiting for me to get right to work. My browser’s home page on one account will be different than it is on another account. As I can identify something that I’ll be doing often enough, I’ll set up a new account and optimize it for that task.

Now, I said all of that to give you a bit of background on how I operate. This morning, I signed into my main marketing account and it loaded a text editor with a couple dozen documents open and my iCal calendar application. In this version of my calendar, I’m subscribed to a marketing calendar maintained by Aweber.com. Someone at Aweber regularly updates this calendar with interesting holidays, events, and observances, and some have some good marketing ideas associated with them.

This morning, I saw a band across the entire week, celebrating National DeLurking Week.

Here’s what the calendar says:

It’s time to get active online. You’ve got 51 weeks a year to read webpages without making your presence known, but this week, be sure to comment wherever possible! DeLurk and come out of the shadows!

National DeLurking Week is celebrated the second full week of January, running from Monday through Sunday.

One of the goals of most bloggers is to start a conversation on their blog. Otherwise, it feels like we’re just standing on a mountain and shouting into a fog bank.

I’ve been lucky and have developed some friendships with other bloggers around the world. I am positive this would not have happened if we didn’t comment on each others’ blogs. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree, but we always learn from each other.

In fact, making it easy for someone to comment about what I write about was the major determining factor that finally motivated me to leave my previous primary blog and develop this one. It is set up to encourage your comments and, in return, you get links to your latest blog posts and/or websites. I think that’s only fair.

So, are you planning to celebrate National DeLurking Week?

Leave a comment somewhere. Make a new friend. Learn something or share what you’ve already learned.

Now, don’t just leave a “good post” comment. Leave something substantive, something that will enhance the conversation.

Lurkers, this is the week to come out of the shadows!

Act on your dream!

JD

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TripleClicks – SFI new store grand opening

January 9, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 9 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Malls and Portals, Network Marketing, SFI Marketing Group, Squidoo Lenses 

As far back as July, 2008, or maybe even earlier, Gery Carson, President of SFI Marketing Group, announced a new ecommerce store. In mid-December, 2008, he announced the opening date of the store, January 5, 2009.

I’ve been waiting for that date, because I planned to make some commitments to marketing SFI based on what I saw when the store opened.

That date has come and gone, and I have a lot I want to say about all the changes. In fact, I have so much I want to say that I’m not going to be able to put all of it into one post, so I’ll be addressing the changes in several posts over the next few days. Today, I want to talk about the new TripleClicks store.

(Update August 2009: Affiliate links removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

True to Gery’s word, the store opened on Monday, January 5, 2009. It opened a couple of hours late and there were some issues when it first went public, but by the end of the day most of those issues were ironed out and the store was performing pretty well.

Some of the problems people experienced were related to propagating the new domain through the Domain Name System (DNS), the world-wide database program that links domain names to specific IP addresses. Depending upon a variety of factors, it can take from a few minutes to a few days for a new domain to propagate worldwide. This is totally outside of a domain owner’s influence, so we just have to wait when a new domain goes public.

It’s been almost four days since the new TripleClicks store opened on Monday, and I’m seeing fewer people reporting problems with accessing the site, so I now feel comfortable talking about it and marketing the products in the store.

New TripleClicks lens on Squidoo

To start with, I just published a lens at Squidoo: SFI Marketing Group Store – TripleClicks. Come visit the lens and join in the duel and/or leave your comments. (That lens has been deleted.)

As always, I hope you’ll rate the lens and tell your friends about it.

Thanks!

SFI’s Veriuni line of products

As you may, or may not, know, SFI has a proprietary line of Veriuni products that include all-natural cleaners, dietary supplements, weight-loss products, personal grooming supplies, pet products, and probably some items I can’t think of right now.

The products you’ve come to love are available in the new store, but there is no Veriuni department. The products are shown in the departments in which they best fit. The cleaners are in Home & Garden; supplements and vitamins are in Health & Wellness; hand soaps, shampoo, and conditioners are in Personal Care; pet shampoos and supplements are in Pet Care, and so forth.

One way to find all the Veriuni products is to search for “Veriuni” on any page of the store.

You can find the Purjava products by searching for “Purjava” or “coffee.”

I’m getting better results by searching on just one word rather than a phrase. What’s your experience?

I am a real fan of the Veriuni line of all-natural, nontoxic cleaning supplies. These come in one quart or one gallon sizes and are concentrated cleaning products that you can dilute with water to obtain the correct solution for your cleaning needs.

For example, if you look at the price of a quart of Veriuni All-Purpose Cleaner, it may seem expensive to you, especially when you factor in the shipping costs. You have to remember, however, that after diluting the concentrate, you have actually purchased up to 32 gallons of cleaner. I think that makes the price much more acceptable, and that’s before you factor in all the benefits related to health and the environment.

New products

There are many new retail products in the store that we can promote.

For example, there are 53 new Dessert Essence beauty products available. Just go to the new TripleClicks store and search for “Desert Essence” to see the full list.

That’s another group of items SFI affiliates can promote and earn SVP and commissions on whenever a customer buys after following one of your affiliate links.

And, they’re even easy to promote. As an SFI affiliate, you’re already registered at the store, so just sign in with your SFI ID and password. When you do that, you’ll notice some changes. One of the most significant changes is when you look at a product’s page.

For example, look at the page for Baywood Lip Maximizing Formula, 3g. (Be sure you’re logged in.)

At the bottom of the page, affiliates will see a link for promoting the product, and your affiliate code is already built into the link. Additionally, you’ll find information related to SVP, CV, and the commission you’ll earn based on your rank as an affiliate, EA, or team leader. How much more convenient can that be? It’s one of the features I really like about the new store.

I mentioned that there are new products. In the Personal Care department, alone, there are now 186 products we can promote. Part of those products are retail products and we earn SVP and commissions from sales of them. Some are products that are being sold by private sellers – people like you and me – and we earn SVP on sales of those products, but not commissions.

If you haven’t taken some time to look at the new SFI TripleClicks store, I urge you to take some time and study it.

If you’re an SFI affiliate, you now have lots of new ways to earn commissions. If you’re not, you can join SFI for free and get started.

International Affiliate Concerns

One of the biggest concerns for international affiliates (anyone who lives outside the United States) has been the high cost of shipping to other countries.

I don’t think this first release of the store has addressed that concern. If I’m wrong, please feel free to correct me.

On the Welcome to the new year and SFI 3.0! page, Gery Carson addresses this issue, by saying:

Special note on shipping costs: One of our key objectives with the new store was to reduce shipping costs (especially for international affiliates and customers). To achieve this goal, we completely overhauled our shipping programming and installed all new software and hardware in our shipping center. We expect that this will have a positive impact.

Additionally, with TC’s Private Seller Program (more on this in a moment), products will be available for shipment from all over the world. This will also help reduce shipping costs since the product can literally be coming from within your same country, region, or city.

The biggest impact item, however, will be our alliances with dropshipping companies that will ship to you from around the world. Unfortunately, we were not able to get this component completed in time for our launch today. But rest assured, this IS coming. Watch for updates on this topic.

I’m hoping that these changes, when they are introduced, will make it much easier for all of us to sell products worldwide.

The TripleClicks Private Seller Program

This is where the new store starts to get really interesting.

Although it is unfair to compare the brand new TripleClicks store to marketing behemoths such as eBay and Amazon, I think you should pay some serious attention to the Private Seller Program.

It’s true that the features related to this are very basic at this time and don’t have the bells and whistles we have come to expect from sites such as eBay, but you can sell your stuff on TripleClicks right now.

That’s right. Take the stuff you no longer want and sell it to someone else.

Most SFI affiliates were given three credits for listing items and additional credits can be purchased inexpensively.

Anyone can buy credits to sell their stuff on TripleClicks.

For example, you can purchase one TC Credit for $1.99 or a pack of 250 TC Credits for $47.50. There are other packages of credits, too.

This means that you can sell one item for only $1.99 or buy a pack of 250 credits and sell your items for only $0.19 each.

If you have a lot to sell, you can purchase the credits you need and earn SVP. You can become an EA by buying credits and selling your stuff. Or, if someone else buys credits from your link, you can earn both SVP and commissions. This has the potential for becoming a profitable income stream.

But, don’t buy more than you need! Credits expire one year from purchase and you don’t want a bunch of expired credits.

SFI has provided marketing materials to help you promote the TripleClicks store and the Private Seller Program.

Already, a number of items have been put up for sale by private sellers on the store and more are being added daily.

Although you don’t earn any commissions when people buy from a private seller, you can earn a commission by promoting the store in your local area when the people you refer purchase credits to sell their stuff. Depending upon how well you promote it, and how well SFI implements it, this can be a good way for international affiliates to build an income stream.

At the moment, however, there are some drawbacks to doing this, but Gery says they will be addressed soon.

For example, even on the advanced search page, there is no way to search geographically. In order to reduce shipping costs, it is important that sales can be made relatively locally, especially if we’re going to consider this an online garage sale.

This is being addressed. In a recent update, it was announced:

2:09 p.m. 1/7/09 – We are busy fixing a few things that “broke” during our transition (such as Standing Order management) to SFI 3.0. Everything is coming along VERY nicely. We’ll also soon have in place some of the items that were not operational at launch, such as the “On Sale” and “Top Sellers” menu tabs. We’ll also soon have several additions to the Advanced Search so that you can search geographically, by date entered in TC, and more. We appreciate your patience while we complete these components.

So, we need to exercise some patience and see how the store develops.

In the meantime, however, I feel comfortable promoting it and look forward to it being a big success.

Sell Your Stuff

So, what do you have stashed away in your closet or garage that you no longer want? Sell it on TripleClicks.

I’m going to have to dig around and find something to sell so I can test it.

A few years ago, I had an eBay store and made some pretty good money selling my Steel Roses That Never Wilt. If I were still able to do the blacksmithing I love, I’d start selling my roses on TripleClicks. Unfortunately, I injured my left hand and can’t do any smithing right now, but I’m hoping I’ll get better.

If you make handmade arts and crafts, you may want to consider listing some of them on TripleClicks to see how it works for you.

There is a lot more to say about the changes at SFI and the new TripleClicks store, but I’m going to stop here. I’ll have more to say in later posts.

What’s your opinion?

So, what do you think?

Are you more or less interested in SFI now that you know a bit about the new store?

I look forward to discussing it with you.

Act on your dream!

JD

(Update August 2009: Affiliate links removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

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Site Build It holiday special ends today

January 5, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 4 Comments
Filed under: Sitesell and Site Build It, Webhosting 

The annual Site Build It! holiday special ends today at midnight.

Originally scheduled to end at midnight on Christmas, it was extended until today, which is the first business day of the year for some people.

Until midnight, you can buy one SBI subscription and get one free. Give both as gifts. Give one to a friend, colleague, or relative, or keep both for yourself. It’s up to you.

If you’ve been meaning to take advantage of this special, don’t let it slip by.

Learn more about Site Build It!

Act on your dream!

JD

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Is Twitter a microblog or a party line?

January 1, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 28 Comments
Filed under: Business Networking, Communities, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Telephone, Twitter, Western North Carolina 

I have discovered that there are very few people in Murphy, NC who are using Twitter.

As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I can educate my friends and neighbors in this little mountain town to use free Internet services to promote their activities, interests, events, organizations, and businesses.

I’ve experimented with websites, blogs, forums, communities, and more, and none have gained traction, yet. Perhaps I’m just a bit ahead of time on this, but it may also just be a matter of finding an easy-to-understand analogy that will attract people to creating new conversations online.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we’ve been trained for decades that promotion and advertising are mostly one-way announcements and not two-way conversations.

To promote an event, we buy advertising on the radio or newspapers. If our area and event are big enough, we may even promote it on TV.

These are examples of one-way announcements. We tell, and hope someone listens, hears, and does what we want.

With the widespread use of the Internet, however, this is changing.

Now, we can have conversations, inexpensively or free, and these can lead to that most-wanted form of promotion, word-of-mouth recommendations.

Those of us who practically live online don’t really understand that most people don’t spend all their time thinking about websites, blogs, forums, social networking, and all the other things that we devote our time and energy to on a daily basis.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I asked someone for his email address and he wasn’t really sure. Now, I don’t know about you, but my email address is so important to me that it has been indelibly imprinted onto my brain.

I’ve spent years making it easy for people to email me. In fact, I get hundreds of emails every day and usually send a dozen or two. How could I not know my email address? It seems almost impossible.

Yet, many people don’t depend upon the Internet for carrying on conversations and talking about what is important to them.

I can spend a half-hour or so writing a blog entry or a new web page about something that is important to me, and I can make it available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. It’s practically free.

Even when I consider how much I pay annually for domain names, webhosting, email autoresponders, page rotators, banner rotators, and other similar services, it all adds up to less than a couple of thousand dollars per year. How much newspaper or radio advertising can I buy for that?

A blog post or web page has an indefinite life-span. I know that I’m making sales from information I put on the web years ago, not just from what I wrote yesterday or today.

Currently, a search on Google for “John Dilbeck” returns over 8,000 results and “johndilbeck” returns over 35,000 results, so there is a lot of information out there created by me or talking about me. This is just a small sample of all that I’ve put online over the last several years.

A radio ad has a life span of seconds. A newspaper ad has a life span of days. Even most promotional products have life spans of weeks or months.

What is the life span of a tweet on Twitter?

That’s hard to say.

If we’re online and watching our Twitter stream, it seems as if most tweets have a life span of seconds, almost like a radio spot.

But, that’s only part of the story.

Think of a major event or thing and search for it on Google. You’ll find hundreds or thousands of links to what you searched for, but you already expect that, don’t you?

Now search for it on Twitter.

Did you know that all those tweets are still available? Did you know that all the hyperlinks are preserved and are still active? Did you know that the search engines follow those links?

Want to know what I’ve been saying on Twitter, or what people have been saying to, or about, me?

Does that give you a different idea about the life span of a tweet?

Now, what happens if we take this knowledge and use it to try to build a conversation.

That’s one of the things I’m going to be doing in 2009.

This year, I’m going to concentrate on two things:

1. affiliate marketing

2. promoting the people, events, and organizations in Murphy, NC.

I am dramatically narrowing my focus and hope I can build higher revenue from affiliate marketing and gain better traction in promoting what’s going on in Murphy.

I’m not going to become a news organization. I’ll leave that to the newspapers and radio stations in town. After all, I’m interested in marketing, not news.

While testing it, I’ve done it for free for several years. This year, I’ll charge reasonable rates for what I will do, and those rates will be much less than what it would cost for using traditional advertising.

Still, I like doing things for free on the Internet and I’ll help people in my community learn how to do that, too.

I think Twitter can play an important part in doing all this.

Earlier, I said that it takes a good analogy or model so that people can easily understand how to join in online conversations. Things that are simple for some of us can be confusing to others.

For example, take the idea of Twitter being a microblog. Those of us who blog every day can understand that, but if you don’t know about blogging, is it a good model to use?

You may not be an old geezer like me, but I remember when several people used the same phone line. This was called a party line. At any given time, someone may have been talking on the phone, but you never knew who was listening.

Later there were private lines and now cell phones, but in the very early days, we had party lines.

Here in Murphy, this is a good analogy to use for Twitter. Why? Because it’s an ingrained part of the local culture. There is a popular program on WKRK radio called PartyLine, and it is hosted by Bill Yonce on weekdays and Tim Radford on Saturdays.

Listeners can join the conversation by calling the program and talking to the hosts. They can chat about what’s happening, offer what they want to sell or ask for what they want to buy, or just pass the time for a few minutes. A few years ago, when Mom was healthier and still able to get around well, she would always have PartyLine playing on the radio as she worked in the kitchen.

So, for the people who are much more comfortable with offline communications, perhaps a party line is a better analogy for Twitter than is a microblog.

You can listen to whomever you chose on Twitter, so it’s not like some giant chat room. You can fine tune the group of people you listen to so that you get specifically what you want. Anyone can choose to listen to you, or not, too.

Substitute the word “follow” for “listen” and you have a good understanding of Twitter.

Then, you have to think about how these groups of followers overlap, intersect, and diverge. For example, John may follow George, but not Jane. Perhaps Jane follows John, but not George. If George tweets about something interesting, John would learn about it – potentially – but Jane probably would not. However, if John then tweets about it, he would be extending the reach of the conversation beyond George’s followers/listeners. In traditional marketing, we call this “word of mouth.”

In reality, George may tweet about it, and John may post the information on a blog, lens, forum, website, or some other presence he maintains on the web. All of this can be done in a remarkably short time, with little effort, and negligible expense.

Who knows how far the information will spread?

So, while Twitter may be thought of as a party line, it potentially has a much wider reach. It brings another meaning to the old saying, “a little birdie told me.”

Unlike a party line, however, you can’t just talk as long as you want. You are limited to short tweets of 140 characters or less. You can tweet all you want, but each one is short and generally focused.

How much does it cost? Nothing.

So how is that going to help me promote Murphy, NC?

Well, there’s the rub.

There are so many tweets every day on Twitter that a few about Murphy would easily get lost in the crowd.

That’s where the #MurphyNC hashtag comes in.

By tagging all tweets that are specifically about something or someone in Murphy with that code, it is easy to search for them. It is also relatively easy to syndicate those search results.

Currently, there are few tweets with that hashtag, but I’ll be working to change that, over time.

This morning, I am testing syndicating these #MurphyNC tweets on my Squidoo lens for Murphy, NC 28906.

It didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped.

I could not get the lens to show the feed, so I ran it through Feedburner.com and created a new feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MurphyNC-TwitterSearch

Squidoo can read and show that feed, with no problem. I wonder if it is because the Twitter search feed is in Atom format rather than RSS.

Another problem to consider if you want to syndicate hashtag searches on your lenses is the fact that Twitter uses relative anchor addresses in the content, instead of absolute URLs. This means that the #MurphyNC link in the content will not link directly to the Twitter search page. This will give you unintended results, depending upon where you syndicate it.

To get around this problem, I’m syndicating headlines only on my Squidoo lenses. If someone clicks the headline, it will take him/her to the status address for that particular tweet. Since this is shown on the Twitter domain, the hashtag link in the content will point to the right place.

It will be impossible to syndicate a real-time conversation on Squidoo, because the minimum update time for an RSS feed is 30 minutes for a Squidoo RSS module. At this point, that’s not a problem, because I’m the only person doing it and all my #MurphyNC tweets have been tests up until now. However, if it ever gets popular, this would not be a workable solution for syndicating the feed.

Although doable, this may not be the best way to syndicate a conversation on Squidoo.

I’m open for suggestions, because this is something I want to do on multiple lenses, as well as several blogs and websites.

Why am I talking about this on a blog that is about affiliate marketing?

This question is easier to answer. It’s because readers of this blog are generally more technically sophisticated and are used to online interactions. It’s also because I earn money from affiliate marketing even on my local pages for Murphy, NC.

And, Twitter is already helping me earn from my affiliate marketing efforts on my Squidoo lenses and blog posts.

This has been a long-winded way of asking your opinion of how to describe using Twitter to talk about a town or city. Is it a microblog or a party line, or something else entirely?

What model or analogy would you suggest to make it easier for offline-oriented people to join in online discussions using Twitter? Do you think Twitter is really effective for this?

Act on your dream!

JD

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