Internet Marketing, SEO, SEM, & Social Media Blog from Webbed Marketing

Tremont Goodie Shop Owner Turns to Social Media For Help

As many have heard over the past 24 hours, The Tremont Goodie Shop in Upper Arlington has closed.    

After 53 years in operation, the store in Tremont Center has closed its doors. The well-liked Upper Arlington bakery posted a sign in its window this week with the simple reason: the economy.

First a brief history. The store was opened in 1955 by Bill Wood. Wood sold the store to James Krenek (Doraine Cooper's father) in 1965. For the next 40 years, the store was passed down through the Krenek family. In 2006 Paul and Doraine Cooper took ownership of the store. And now in 2009 the store is closing its doors.

Fear not fellow sweet-toothed citizens! A previous owner of the Tremont Goodie Shop is trying to reopen the store. Debbie Smith owned the bakery with her father, James Krenek, from 1993 to 2006 and is currently negotiating to keep the Tremont Goodie Shop alive.

The exciting part? She is turning to social media for help! Debbie has set up a Twitter account and Facebook page to spread the world about her efforts and to gain support. Debbie is organizing an event on Facebook, Picket the auction to save the Tremont Goodie Shop, and is asking members of the community to help her bid on all the Goodie Shop equipment at a  public auction on September 27 so that she can use the equipment to reopen the store. Debbie is also Tweeting about the event and asking for support from her Twitter followers.

For updates on the Tremont Goodie Shop, follow @GoodieShop on Twitter and become a fan of the Tremont Goodie Shop on Facebook. You can even buy an "I heart the Goodie Shop" t-shirt! 

Something New, Something Blue: Today Twitter Has a New Homepage

New visitors to Twitter.com will now see a brand new front page! The new page provides some brief explanation of what Twitter does - "Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world." The new page also offers the option to search Twitter first to "see what people are saying about" a topic. Another change to the homepage is the trending topic highlights. Hot topics on Twitter are shown by the minute, day and week. One final change is the drop of the infamous "What are you doing?" in exchange for the invitation to "Join the conversation" by signing up on Twitter.

Biz explains the change on the official Twitter blog:

Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved.

To compare, the old Twitter front page looked like this:

Which do you like more?

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Facebook Usernames Start Tonight

You have probably heard a lot about Facebook usernames this week and we wanted to offer our advice on how to manage this new Facebook feature.

Facebook profile URLs have always just included a randomly assigned number like "id=123456789" to distinguish profiles. While this works fine it does not make the URL easy to share. Facebook is starting to offer usernames to make it easier for people to find each other and connect.

The transition will look like this:

(photo credit Facebook Blog)

Starting at 12:01AM EDT on Saturday, June 13, you will be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages by visiting www.facebook.com/username. Once a username has been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer it.

Facebook offers the following guidelines for choosing a username:

• Your username should be as close as possible to your true name (e.g. Jsmith or John.Smith)
• Usernames can only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period (".")
• Choose a username you will be happy with for the long term. Usernames are not transferable

Eligibility

Eligibility is limited to anyone who joined Facebook before 3 p.m. (EDT) on June 9, 2009 (before usernames were publicly announced). This limitation is temporary to prevent squatting. All users who joined Facebook after the cut-off date will be eligible to register usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.

To register a username for your Business Page it must meet two requirements: it must be live on Facebook prior to May 31, 2009  and it must have a minimum of 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009.

Reserve a Trademarked Name

To prevent the registration of a trademarked name you can fill out a form at http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights. This form is for rights holders interested in preventing their trademarks from being registered as usernames, not for reserving generic words or keywords. Facebook is strongly encouraging, and will hopefully be monitoring, to be sure all Page administrators choose a username that closely matches the true identity of their profile and business to prevent squatting.

To reserve a trademarked name you will need to provide:

• Company Name
• Your Title
• Contact Email
• Trademark to protect (Must be your exact trademark)
• Registration number

Intellectual Property Rights

If you find someone whose username infringes on your intellectual property rights, you can fill out a Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement form at http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php?noncopyright_notice=1.

Under 1,000 Fans? Why Not Create Your Own Vanity URL!

If you feel left out and still want your own vanity URL, your web team can create a Facebook URL on your own domain that is just as easy to share. This involves creating a new sub-domain and redirecting that URL to your Facebook Page. Like so: http://webbedmarketing.com/facebook.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions!

Columbus Corners: High Street and 4th Avenue (cbuscorners)

One of my favorite corners in Columbus, Ohio is at High Street and 4th Avenue. Some of the first shows I went to were at Little Brothers. So many great bands came through Columbus to play at Little Brothers. I saw Pete Yorn, The Damnwells, The Decemberists, Jude, Bob Schneider, and more that I am forgetting. I often remember walking to Skullys for Ladies/80s Night after an awesome show at Little Brothers. 4th Ave and High Street is great! Now Little Brothers just needs to come back!

View Larger Map

This project brought to you by the Columbus Social Media Cafe

Columbus Corners: My favorite place to be in and around Columbus, Ohio #CbusCorners

My favorite place in Columbus, Ohio is to be outside on my bike cycling through some of the best parts of the city. Columbus offers cyclists some gorgeous and safe options to navigate the city.

First a bit about myself.. I ride a Trek 5200 that I have been riding for over 10 years. I have participated in the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure for nine years, which is a 300-mile bike tour around Ohio with 3,000 other cyclists.  On GOBA, I traveled through towns including Mt.Vernon, Lancaster, Athens, Marietta, New Philadelphia, Bowling Green and Newark. Although I do not routinely participate in many organized bike tours anymore, cycling is still a very important part of my life.

My interest in cycling extends beyond the physical training aspect and into the culture of bicycling. I have always been interested in the bike messenger service and the subculture that the messengers belong to. I even thought about being a bike messenger for a few years after graduating from college. I think that messengers are part of a unique group that comes to know the ins and outs of their cities.  Every city has its own, unique identity, which represents and influences the personalities of the messengers.  Travis Hugh Culley, a bike messenger from Chicago, once said, “Who I am is a parallel pursuit, a city and a man.”

After many years of cycling, I think that I have gotten to know a few of the ins and outs of cycling in Columbus, Ohio.  I know that Fishinger to Dublin Rd is one of the best routes to get to less busy riding road, Roberts Road is no fun to ride on and has far too many trucks, the Heritage bike path in Hilliard connects a few country roads and offers a quick route back to civilization, there is a bridge over 315 for bikers and walkers to get to the Olentangy bike path from the Upper Arlington area and the Tour de Grandview is a must for any local biker!

One of my favorite corners of Columbus is one of my regular bike routes (I built this map with an online tool called MapMyRide - it is shareable!):

 

Columbus Corners #CbusCorners

This project brought to you by the Columbus Social Media Cafe

Online April Fools Jokes

A few April Fools Jokes I have noticed around the web this morning.

SlideShare

Like many others, I received the following message from the SlideShare team this morning.

We've noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job ... you must be doing something right. ;-) Why don't you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.

Thrilled by this news I logged into my account to see that indeed my slideshow appeared to have thousands of views!

Good one SlideShare! Looks like you had everyone fooled!

Google

While checking my Gmail this morning I noticed the new Gmail Autopilot feature.

This humorous feature is:

The easiest email could possibly be.

As more and more everyday communication takes place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.

Google even provided some sample autopilot responses that you could expect with Gmail Autopilot.

Columbus Underground

Columbus Underground announced they will be launching a magazine for young professionals.

We are proud to announce that Columbus Underground will soon be launching a brand new monthly magazine called Columbus Underground Magazine (or CUM for short) aimed at the growing Young Professional demographic .

YouTube

Have you checked out YouTube's new layout? Everything is upside-down! YouTube is even offering some tips for viewing the new layout, including turn your monitor upside down, tilt your head to the side and move to Australia. 

 

Wikipedia

The stories on Wikipedia's front page are pretty hilarious right now!

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a world-renowned institution dedicated to showcasing the finest art acquired from Boston-area refuse. The museum started in a pile of trash in 1994, in a serendipitous moment when an antiques dealer came across a painting of astonishing power and compositional incompetence that had been tragically discarded.

 

Have you seen any other April Fools jokes this morning? Share them!

Webbed Webinar: Webbed Marketing Approved Twitter Tools and Applications

So we have convinced you to start using Twitter. Now, learn how to use it like a pro. We will share some of our favorite platforms, tips, tricks and add-ons that will help you fit Twitter into your already busy schedule. Can't decide between TweetDeck, Twhirl, TwitterFox and Twitterrific? See our list of ten great twitter tools and applications, how to get the most out of them, why we use them and how they will improve your Twitter experience.

Who are the local twitter rockstars? Your decision is powered by Google Docs

There has been talk about who the most popular, important, influential or rockstaresque people are on twitter. Some say the most important tweeple are those with the most followers, others say it is those with the most interesting tweets and still others say it is more about who they are off twitter that makes them important. One thing for sure is that everyone has their own opinions on who receives the title of twitter elite, or twitterati.

To help solve the debate, local tweeter Jamie Grove (@hownottowrite) is asking the twitterverse who they think their local rockstars are. Anyone can submit their opinions and explain their selection.

Jamie says:

Twitterati Local - Who are your *local* Rockstars?

If you got here from a retweet, I'm @hownottowrite and I decided to create this poll in response to the Forbes article on Twitter "power elites" (see this: http://tinyurl.com/forbes-twitter).

Forbes did a swell job rounding up the people with the most followers, people who influence twitter on a broad scale... But what about the people who rock the local Twitterati scene? What about the people who get folks out to the latest gallery opening or hook up parents with some special event? Or spread the local news?

Who are *your* local Twitterati? And why do they rock?

I'll post the results in a few days and send out a tweet (naturally).

This seems like a fair way to decide who really is the twitter elite. Let the people decide!

The most interesting thing I noticed about this effort is that Jamie is using Google Docs to gather and share this information. Google recently added a form option to Google Docs that allows users to setup a feedback form, embed it on any website and collect and share data easily. When someone fills out the form, their responses are automatically timestamped and collected in a Google spreadsheet. Just like any Google document, the forms can be shared with others to view at their own convenience. This makes collecting and sharing feedback incredibly easy! The information can even be published as a web page to share with the world.

At Webbed Marketing, we are using Google Docs Forms to gather entries to our Google Hates My Website SEO Makeover Contest and to collect information from people interested in Webbed Marketing University courses.

So what are you waiting for?! Start asking your questions right now! 

p.s. If you haven't already, you will need to set up a Google Account and visit https://docs.google.com. Then click "New" and scroll down to "Form."

- from the Desktop of Rebecca Roebuck

First picture of plane crash posted from a Twitter user

Like many, I first heard about the US Airways plane crash on Twitter.

Twitter user, Janis Krums, was the first to post a live photo from the US Airways plane that crashed into the Hudson River this afternoon.

Krums is from Sarasota, FL and was leaving New York on a ferry that was one of the first on the scene to rescue passengers.

 

Krums photo on twitpic has generated so much traffic that the page (or entire site) is currently slow and unvisitable.

Krums has become a photojournalist hero and his followers have exploded from around 200 to nearly 1,000 in less than an hour.

According to CNN the plane ran into a flock of birds that took out both engines and the pilot made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. Passengers were rescued immediately and there appear to be no injuries.

Twitter to the rescue..

- From the Desktop of Rebecca Roebuck

Say Goodbye to Pownce

Micro blogging site, Pownce, will be shutting down on Dec 15, 2008. The Pownce team will be  joining the blogging software company Six Apart. For more closing statements check out the Pownce Blog. Or for the Six Apart welcome statement check out the Six Apart blog.

Pownce users will be able to export their Pownce messages and media at http://pownce.com/settings/export.

The Pownce team members Leah Culver, Mike Malone and Ariel Waldman can be found on the Vox community at leahculver.vox.com, mjmalone.vox.com and arielwaldman.vox.com. Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka will become advisers to the Six Apart team.

We will miss you Pownce!