A few weeks ago we provided a SOPA “cheat sheet” to try and help explain what this bill could potentially mean for life on the Internet. The bill is still alive and on December 15th, it will go to the House of Representatives for debate. Mashable has once again provided an excellent infographic that details SOPA’s history, highlights the key points, profiles the supporters and opposition, and gives suggestions for how you can help fight against it (including having your name read during Senator Ron Wyden’s filibuster on Senate floor!)

Via: Business Insurance Blog

If you spend any time at all the Internet, you’ve most likely seen tweets, status updates and articles talking about this thing called SOPA. If you’ve not had the time or inclination to dive in and find out what it’s all about but you are curious, we’ve attempted to cover the main highlights in this post.

1. SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act from the House of Representatives (H.R. 3261). There is a similar Senate bill called Protect-IP.

2. This is a bill that is backed by the entertainment industry and pharmaceutical companies. Music labels and television/movie production companies don’t want people to be able to steal their content. Pharmaceutical companies don’t websites to be able to sell pharmaceutical drugs to people online without a prescription. Overall, those two things don’t sound so bad. The problem comes with the measures the act will allow government to take to enforce it. Paul McDougall of Information Week writes about the 5 key elements of the bill and their implications.

Allison from BlogWorld sums it up like this, “Basically, what SOPA does is create a way for content creators (anyone from a large movie studio to an individual artist) to fight piracy, which is a good thing. But it also creates tons of loopholes for content creators to shut down anything they don’t like or understand that they feel infringes on their rights.”

3. Internet companies are, naturally, against this bill and sent an open letter to Congress stating their displeasure with it.

“We support the bill’s stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign “rogue” websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require the monitoring of web sites. We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity. We cannot support these bills as written and ask that you consider more targeted ways to foreign “rogue” web sites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting, while preserving the innovation and dynamism that has made the Internet such an important driver of economic growth and job creation.”

The letter was signed by nine Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, AOL and eBay.

David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS, said in an interview with CNET that the bill, “creates a tremendous amount of liability for ISPs and service providers like mine to become the censorship arm of the Department of Justice, which is not a position we want to be in.”

This video from FightForTheFuture.org sums it all up rather succinctly.

4. This bill can be stopped but it will take a large grassroots effort that is already well under way. If you feel this bill is bad for American and the Internet, please don’t delay – contact your congressperson TODAY!

Email your Congressional Representative.
Send a note to your Senators.

UPDATE: Mashable has handy infographic about SOPA

Locked Laptop image courtesy of Microsoft ClipArt Online

Word of mouth is so much a part of our everyday lives that we don’t always stop to think about how we are affected by it. The landscape of social media is covered with word of mouth marketing, some of it organic (when you simply rave about a product or company that you love just because you love it), some of it sponsored (when you share information about a product or brand because you got something in return for it), and some of it orchestrated (when you share that YouTube clip or funny picture that has already become or will soon be “viral”).

Last weekend, my husband asked me if I knew anything about Super 8 and would I like to go see it? My reply was, “I have no idea what it’s about but I know it’s good!” You know how I knew that, right? Word of mouth. I had seen many, many tweets and Facebook status updates in the previous twenty-fours about this new movie from J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg. It turns out, the marketers behind Super 8 pretty much expected that to happen:

Super 8 is expected to bow at between $25-30 million. This is an original, not a sequel, and for a reported $50-million summer movie with no stars, that’s just fine. And for all those who believe that the film cost closer to $95 million, Paramount should be able to skate by with that bow. Why? As their Twitter sneaks attest, the studio is confident that the movie will play once moviegoers start spreading good word-of-mouth, especially in summer when midweek business is strong.

They were right. The buzz around Super 8 has been loud. And yes, if you’re looking for a great summer flick, I highly recommend Super 8! (It’s a well-deserved PG-13, so keep the younger kids at home.)

And speaking of buzz, I think entities like Ripley’s Believe It or Not and circus freak tents were the founding fathers of the Internet hoax. We are easily fooled on the Internet and have seemingly forgotten the old adage of, “if it’s too good (or too weird) to be true, then it’s probably not true (or real)”. And while it’s quite true that people out there do some really bizarre things, when it comes to viral images on the Internet, everything needs to be taken with a healthy does of skepticism, otherwise, we’ll keep getting hoaxes, albeit benign ones, like the Facebook Tattoo Video.

ReelSEO Editor-in-Chief, Jeremy Scott explains why the hoax worked, “Viral hoax videos work best when they are squarely on the line between being incredible and being hard to believe. On the one hand, most viewers were critical of the girl, having a hard time understanding why anyone would get such a silly tattoo–and such a big one, covering the entire arm. On the other hand, the clip is completely believable, because honestly… people tattoo unthinkably weird crap on their bodies every day.”

When it comes to word-of-mouth marketing, I like nothing better than seeing people supporting each other in their ventures. It’s my favorite thing about working for One2One Network. The O2O team is incredibly supportive and loyal to relationships fostered over the years. And when our friends succeed, we love to cheer them on and spread the word the best that we can. That why when I saw this article about a fairly new website called HelloGiggles, I just had to grin. Not just because it’s a fun name but because it’s success has largely come from friends supporting each other and spreading the word about it through social media outlets.

Deschanel, Rossi, and McAleer are all big on the social networking scene with plenty of followers but moreover, all three have naturally likeable personalities. At one point or another, the modern young woman has wished she had one of them as her college roommate or coworker in the next cubicle over. As spokeswomen for their own brand, the threesome sold it better than any high-profile advertising or marketing campaign ever could. With only a handful of printed interviews and a giggly when your cursor brushes over it avatar of the trio’s bobbling heads, HelloGiggles created the buzz solely online and kept it going long after the launch of the site.

These examples speak to the fact that word of mouth marketing isn’t just about writing a blog post about a new kind of cookie, as much as we love cookies! When we are touched by something, whether it’s being blown away by great cinematography, beguiled by stranger than fiction or drawn in by really good content, word of mouth is our best and most powerful way sharing a part of ourselves with those around us, on and off the Internet.

photos from iCLIPART

If you consider your blog a business, or even if you don’t, you are probably aware of your blog stats or metrics.   There are so many stat counters out there, it’s hard to know which one is best and honestly there is no right answer.  Ask around and get suggestions from friends.  If you are just installing an analysis tool for the first time, it may seem confusing, and it’s important to know what the terms mean.

Statcounter Screencap

You hear uniques, PV’s, bounce rate which are sometimes called different names in different programs.  Your tool should have a help section and that is where I have found the most help in deciphering the terms and their meanings.   But if you still can’t figure it out, here’s some guidance that will hopefully help you along.

Page Rank or PR>  Google has an algorithm to determine a page’s or site’s rank which basically means putting a number on it’s relative importance on the web.  PR goes from 0-10.  If you have a new site, don’t be alarmed if you are a “0″ or “1″.  Securing incoming links from sites that rank higher than you do will bring that up.  Blogrolls and guest posting are great for this.  I would research ways to improve your PR because some companies will only work with a certain PR or above, and that’s strictly a business strategy on their part. You can go to PR Checker to see what yours is.

Unique Visits>  When we ask for Uniques, we mean the number of times an individual has visited your website.  This is a number that varies from program to program.  Why?  Because some will consider a visitor unique if every day and some every 30 minutes.  So if your mother-in-law stalks your blog 3 times a day (eek) she may be considered 3 visitors.   If you think about it, people tend to read blogs on a daily basis, so setting it for 1 day (if you can set yours) makes more sense and gives a better estimate of your readership.  You may have a stat just called Visits.  I would Google the program you use and see if you can find an explanation of the difference in Uniques and Visits.

Page Views>  Everytime a person visits it’s one page view (PV).  If they go to multiple pages on your site, each one is counted as a page view.  It’s not surprising to find PV’s more than double your uniques.  Linking to other relevant posts of yours w/in your current post and adding widgets for “popular posts” and “commenters” are ways to keep people on your site looking around.  Google reevaluates this number ever so often, so you may see an increase so it’s important if you keep a media kit to keep this current.

Bounce Rate>  I feel not enough attention is paid to your bounce rate.  This is a measure of how quickly a person who arrives at your site leaves.  Obviously it’s better to have them stay around, right?  It shows people like what they see and actually read posts.  The lower the better.  You are going to get google traffic which can come and go quickly, and may raise your rate, but having dedicated readers will balance that out.  Rates can vary greatly too, depending on the type of blog you have.  Mine is at 38%, but I have a lot of tutorials on there and people might have to stay on the site longer to follow.  I have heard anything below 70% is good.

*Answering a question in the comments, if you do a lot of giveaways and promote them heavily, you may find this rate on the high side.  People come, enter, move on.  Bloggers who just post recipes may see a higher rate.   People search for the recipes, grab it and go, and this may be higher during the holidays…  think of it in terms of “what will keep people on my site longer”.  So for certain niche blogs, the number may vary by the nature of the niche.

I run two different stat programs.  I use Google Analytics and Get Clicky.  I ALWAYS suggest having two running as 1. they all produce different results and 2. one might go down and then you have a backup.  Most programs will allow you to specify a time period for capture.  PR / Brands typically either work by the month.  If your stats vary significantly at certain times like a holiday, you might want a 3-6 month average…

Other stat counters you might want to check out are Statcounter and Sitemeter.

We have added some links to the learning lounge that relate to blog stats and I would suggest you start reading there first.  Then if you have any specific questions, hit us up int the comments and we’ll try out best to answer.  And of course feel free to email us anytime (envelope on the sidebar!)

I love finding cool stuff online but what I love more is smart friends who introduce me to cool stuff!   Melanie Nelson is the brains behind Blogging Basics 101 and turned me onto a site called Flavors.me. It’s a fun site to showcase your online world whether it be your blog(s), twitter, facebook or linked in…or any number of preset social networks.

Melanie was even able to redirect her personal URL http://melanienelson.com to the site.

Click on the blog link and it’s set up to automatically show your blog feed as well.  Click on the twitter and show your tweets.  Click and show a linked in profile.  Click and showcase your flickr.  It’s very cool!  This makes it so easy for someone to find out about you and your activities all in one place with the creative twist of allowing you to customize the background, colors and font with one click.

Play around with it and if you set one up, let us know!  We’d love to see it!