By now we should all know the importance of an authentic content strategy that moves beyond traditional marketing techniques, but it seems like it’s a lesson worth repeating.

Read my full post on FierceContentManagement.

Photo by Banalities on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Sorry for the layoff on the Friday Five folks, but it’s a very busy time for me since Thanksgiving. But it’s time to get back to the regular routine and that means the Friday 5 (at least for this week).

Enough talk, let’s just get to the links:

• An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc - Thomas Hawk Digital Connection Blog.
• Facebook Brings Facial Recognition to Photo Tagging – Mashable.
• Ping Introduces Social Playlists – TiPb
• 30 Inspiring Ideas To Develop Content for your Blog – Jeff Bullas Blog.
• Nobody Cares About Your Products – David Meerman Scott, Web Ink Now Blog.

I’ve been thinking lately there needs to be a way to make my WordPress blog more mobile friendly, so of course I turned to my social network for help, and help I got. Turns out there is a simple plug-in called WPTouch. It costs $29.95 for a single license. There are discounts for 5 licenses or an unlimited developer license. You can review pricing options on the Web site.

Once you pay the piper, the developer sends you log-in information and a license key to the email address you provide.

Then follow these steps:

1. Follow the link in the email to login and download the WPTouch plug-in
2. After you download the plug-in,  simply enter your Administrative panel, click Plugins and click the Add New button at the top of the page.
3. At the prompt, enter the name WPTouch, then follow the prompts to add the plug-in to your site.
4. Return to your Plugins control panel, scroll down to WPTouch and click Settings.
5. Review your settings. At a minimum, make sure your blog name is correct. For the most part, you can leave the defaults unless you feel comfortable changing them.

After it’s installed when people access your blog on a mobile device, they will see a mobile-friendly version, which makes it easy to select and view your latest posts.

Note that this is a mobile theme, so it won’t match the theme you see on the open web, but what it will do is make it much easier for people to read your blog on their phones and that to me is a huge step forward.

Another week and our favorite social networking whipping boy, Facebook, stuck its foot in it again this week with news of an application privacy breach in applications like Farmville. Not that’s it that shocking that Farmville would be doing something with your data, but they’re not supposed to. Both Facebook and Zynga, Farmville’s developer have some ‘splaining to do.

Without further delay, this weeks five links in social media:

• Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information – WSJ.com.
• Apple and Facebook CEOs Meet For Dinner To Iron Out Ping | Cult of Mac.
• 5 Ways Businesses Blow it on Twitter – Blogging Tips.com.
• The Facebook News Feed: How it Works,10 Biggest Secrets - The Daily Beast.
• Corporate Blogging Goes Mainstream – eMarketer.

Photo by zieak on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Another week passed by and Facebook and Google manage to dominate the social media news. First we had Facebook announce its relationship with Bing and its integration in Skype. These are hard relationships to ignore, but Google, not to be outdone here made two big announcements of its own: First all it gave Marissa Mayer was promoted and put in charge of location and local services, this is the same area covered by the Facebook-Bing deal.

Secondly Google announced monster third quarter earnings, and CEO Eric Schmidt made it clear that Google was going to be getting much more social too.

Let’s not forget that Microsoft also launched Windows Phone 7 this week too.

Without further adieu, this week’s Friday 5:

• Schmidt On Social: “We Want People To Be More Logged Into Google.” – TechCrunch.
• Why blogging still matters – O’Reilly Radar Blog.
• FourSquare Co-Founder Sees Credit Card Links, More User Rewards in the Future – DailyFinance.
• The Fallacy of Twitter - Lubor on Tech Blog.
• When Social Sites Get Anti-social - Internet Evolution.

Photo courtesy of Moe on Flickr.

Welcome back. It’s time once again for the Friday 5, my choices for the week’s top social media links. Huge this week, was the rumor that Facebook might be working on its own phone. Ya, great idea.

Onward we go for another week:

• Why a Facebook Phone Would be A Disaster (by me) – Internet Evolution.
• Foursquare Will Soon Tell You Where To Eat – The Blog Herald.
• Top 7 Rules For Creating Compelling Headlines – Social Media Today.
• Interview With Mark Zuckerberg On The “Facebook Phone” – TechCrunch.
• The Twitter Tax – Advertising Age.

Image via Wikipedia

Reports began surfacing on Tuesday afternoon that Six Apart, the parent company of TypePad, had been sold to Video Egg. It makes me wonder what will happen to this blogging platform and if it will continue as we’ve known it.

I’ve been using TypePad since 2003. After a brief flirtation with Blogger, I moved to TypePad and I’ve been here ever since. I have no reason to believe that TypePad is going anywhere, but the change makes me uneasy.

This post from Andrian Bloem on the Real Story blog doesn’t make me feel much better about it. It seems as though TypePad might become an after thought in the new media company vision.

It has gotten me thinking about what I would need to do if I moved the blog to another platform. If I did, it would be to WordPress, no contest. But how easy would it be to move my design and my content to another platform? That, I’m not sure.

I know WordPress would be a cheaper option, but for now I’m taking the wait and see approach and I’m not going anywhere.

So long as the new owners continue to support the product, I see no reason to make the switch, but TypePad bloggers like me have to at least be thinking about worst case scenarios and what it mean if that didn’t happen.

Cross-posted on ‘by Ron Miller‘.

Welcome back to the Friday 5, my choices for the best links in social media. This week we didn’t have any dominant social media news like last week’s Facebook Places announcement, so I thought stick to some practical tips and a bit of interesting news from Diaspora, the Facebook alternative being coded by four NYU grads.

Here we go:

• Top 5 Ways Big Brands are Using Foursquare – Mashable.
• An Overdue Update – Join Diaspora Blog.
• Altimeter Report: The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing- Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang.
• 5 Google Analytics metrics that can help improve your blog – Communications Conversations
• Now QR Codes Can Generate Likes On Facebook – All Things Facebook.

Photo by The Truth About… on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Been on an extended vacation and consequently so has the Friday 5. It’s good to be back and share some of my favorite social media links from the past month or so.

• XKCD-Inspired Cartoon Maps the World’s Social Networks. Mashable.
• The Ten Secrets of a Successful Social Media Blog. Jeff Bullas Blog.
• What makes a tweet influential? The HP Blog Hub.
• Creative commons and facilitating mashups to spread your ideas. David Meerman Scott, Web Ink Now Blog.
• 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online. Sam Rosen, Copyblogger Blog.

Welcome to the latest installment of the Friday 5. Facebook was still trying to get out from under the cloud of bad publicity regarding its privacy tools this week. The update was an improvement, but still needs a lot of work to simplify it even further. In yet another bizarre episode, however, the San Francisco Weekly explains the strange insignia spied on Zuckerberg’s hoodie.

Meanwhile Facebook and Yahoo! announced a deal to play together, while  Twitter announced a new link policy it will implement over the coming months. In a bizarre announcement, Viacom, the owners of MTV, basically put a gag order on its employees regarding personal blogging. Not sure how well that will go down with the courts, but I guess we have to wait and see.

Not quite as dramatic as a Zuckerberg meltdown, but still another interesting week in the ever evolving world of online social media.

• Yahoo! strikes deal with Facebook in bid to be the ‘largest social network’ in the world, Emma Barnett, Telegraph UK.
• Twitter to Change Links and How They Are Displayed,  Ben Parr, Mashable.
• Zuckerberg’s Bizarre Facebook Insignia Revealed, And What It Means, Alexia Tsotsis, SF Weekly.
• Facebook hopes new privacy page can quell unrest, Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld.
• Viacom/MTV Issues Intense Employee Gag Order, Basically Takes Ownership of Blogs, Thoughts , Joe Coscarelli, Village Voice