The Only Yard For The Internet Junkie

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ABC News Nightline Story Looks at NACA’s Save the Dream Tour

September 7th, 2009 |

Author: JYDC Admin

Article Source: The Only Yard For The Internet Junkie

Last night, the incredible success of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) was featured on Nightline on ABC News. Entitled “The Financial Terrorist,” the story went on the frontlines to Cleveland, Ohio, with NACA CEO Bruce Marks, “a man trying to restore the American Dream.”

It’s worth noting that Marks is a self-proclaimed “bank terrorist,” according to a recent interview in The Boston Globe entitled, “Taking bank chiefs to task to save homes.” Marks explained, “Bank terrorism is a nonviolent way we personalize the consequences of CEOs’ actions. When someone loses their home, they lose their neighbors, they lose their community, and their kids lose their friends and their schools. It’s personal. Lives have been devastated. We go to the CEOs’ homes, usually on Sunday morning, which is family time, in their gated communities.”

I featured NACA’s Save the Dream Tour in a case study that I presented at SES San Jose 2009 during the session entitled, “How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community.” I also presented excerpts of NACA’s Save The Dream tour documentary produced by DigiNovations at Social Media & Video Strategies during the session entitled, “What Works: Best Practices / Case Studies for Online Video.”

NACA’s Save The Dream tour documentary – excerpts (produced by DigiNovations)

NACA’s “Save the Dream” tour has already helped thousands of homeowners avoid foreclosure, restructure home loans, and reduce mortgage rates. It has used 9 optimized press releases, blog outreach, have a dozen YouTube videos, social media marketing and old fashioned media relations to generate 29 local TV stories, 18 articles in daily newspapers, 272 blog posts, and 246 Twitter tweets. The combined coverage helped to attract over 35,000 participants in Cleveland, 45,000 in Chicago, 40,000 in St. Louis, and 60,000 in Atlanta. But, as I mentioned back at SES San Jose 2009 and Social Media & Video Strategies, NACA’s Save the Dream Tour isn’t over.

Bruce Marks at Save the Dream event.jpg It will continue at upcoming events in Phoenix, AZ, at the Phoenix Convention Center from Sept. 25 to 28; Los Angeles, CA, at the LA Convention Center from Oct. 2 to 5; Las Vegas, NV, at the Thomas and Mack Center from Oct, 9 to 12; and San Francisco, CA, at the Cow Palance from Oct. 16 to 20, 2009.

NACA projects that they will be able to help 80% of those who apply. NACA can do this because it has secured legally binding agreements with most of the major lenders and servicers, which covers 90% of the at-risk homeowners.

But, to achieve an affordable solution, participants also need to bring the following documents to one of NACA’s Save the Dream events:
a) Pay Stubs (most recent available 30 days)
b) Monthly Mortgage Statement (most recent available)
c) Property Tax Bill (most recent available)
d) Homeowners Insurance Bill (most recent available)

It also helps to register for the event. At the first four events this summer, NACA had over 500 staff and volunteers who put in long hours and lots of hard work to help homeowners save their dream. Nevertheless, the turnout has been unprecidented.

As Chris Camp of WSB News in Atlanta reported, “Over four days, 60,000 people have been standing in the hot Georgia sun… hoping for salvation in the midst of America’s money crisis. Now it comes down to this. A woman sobs uncontrollably, comforted by friends and her mother….When she lost one of her jobs, her entire world teetered on the edge of disaster. Instead, she came to the Georgia World Congress Center, hoping for a miracle. She found one: the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.”

Put Some SocialOomph Into Your Tweets

September 2nd, 2009 |

Author: JYDC Admin

Article Source: The Only Yard For The Internet Junkie

TweetLater, over the weekend, changed its name. They are now going by SocialOomph. You can read the official announcement on their blog.

I’ve been using Tweetater – uhm, SocialOomph – now for over six months and I’ve got to say, it’s a great service. I like the fact that I can preschedule tweets for my Twitter account and schedule them to run on a particular time schedule. I also like the fact that I can run multiple accounts through the service.

But the reason they’ve changed their name is still a bit of a mystery, albeit an exciting one. I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see what other services SocialOomph comes up with next. Here’s what they say on their blog:

To date we have been focusing on providing productivity solutions for Twitter users. We decided to change our name to allow for future expansion into other social media solutions, and to ensure that our brand does not conflict with any current or future legal rights of the Twitter organization.

In other words, this seems like a CYA move, but it also implies a bit of an opportunity move. I’m anxious to see what this “future expansion” is that is mentioned. Will SocialOomph offer services to make managing Facebook and/or LinkedIn easier for businesses? How about YouTube and MySpace? The implication seems to be that SocialOomph will become a third-party social profile management service. I like that.

Meanwhile, today, the management features it offers for Twitterers are awesome. Currently, you can perform the following functions through SocialOomph:

Schedule tweets in advance
Pre-program and automatically send direct messages
Track important keywords as they are tweeted
Create draft messages that you can re-use
Track your clicks through Bit.ly URL shortening service
Automate your follow/unfollow habits
Vet your followers so you can follow only those people you want to follow
Run an unlimited numer of Twitter accounts
Purge your DM inbox to delete unwanted messages
View @Mentions and Retweets for all of your accounts
Publish a personal tweet stream as an RSS feed or in XML or Javascript
Delegate your account to someone else to manage

I think you’ll agree, that’s a lot of features, and MOST OF THEM ARE FREE!

Yes, I said most of them. You see, SocialOomph has a free service and a paid professional service. In order to delegate your account to another party, you have to purchase the professional version, but it’s very affordable. I highly recommend SocialOomph if you are a Twitterer and want an easy-to-use application to manage your Twitter accounts.

I encourage you to check out SocialOomph for yourself. If you are a blogging customer of ours we’ll manage your SocialOomph account for you for $100/month and incorporate it with your blog. If you are not a blogging customer of ours, we’ll still manage your account for $150 per month. Just give me a call at 717-528-4005.

Get your SocialOomph account right now.

Allen Taylor manages blogs for a list of clients in a variety of industries and niches. He writes Taylor’s Internet Marketing Blog and owns several websites in more than one niche. He is a full-time marketer and ghostwriter. 717-528-4005.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

%%Put Some SocialOomph Into Your Tweets%%

Put Some SocialOomph Into Your Tweets

Yahoo! Enables Inline Viewing for Video Search

August 28th, 2009 |

Author: JYDC Admin

Article Source: The Only Yard For The Internet Junkie

Yahoo! has introduced a somewhat controversial feature into their video search: inline viewing. The feature allows searchers to view videos directly on the search results page instead of taking them to the site where the video is hosted.

Of course, if you are one of those sites, you want that traffic to your site. But with the large number of videos that are embeddable, it means that videos are being viewed off-site anyway.

If you want to use the inline viewing feature, simply click “Play Now” under the thumbnail of the video search result you wish to see. A larger overlay window will appear, containing the selected video.

Bing also enables inline viewing, but as a preview. This is relevant since Yahoo! and Bing are working on getting their recently announced search deal approved by government antitrust regulators. In the meantime, Yahoo! pursues competitiveness in search, a smart move in case the deal doesn’t get approved.