Considering this is proposed U.S. legislation, and there are only about 300 million people in the United States, and even allowing for the fact that activists may have signed multiple petitions multiple times, it's obvious that the idea of internet censorship gets A LOT of people fired up (as well it should).
So now, what is going to happen to those internet petitions?
What is going to happen with all of the data that was gathered by those who signed the petitions?
Yes, the numbers will probably be used for lobbying purposes, but the actual signatures cannot be used for any official purpose by the U.S. Houses of Congress or by the President. Mostly, that data was gathered for the benefit of the petition hosts.
"Your first name and last initial may be published publicly as part of the petition to Congress. Your email address may be used to send you updates on SOPA/PIPA and other Internet policy initiatives. Your zip code is used to display the groundswell across the country and inform the appropriate members of Congress for your district and state. That’s it. Your personal information is in no way connected to any other Google services or Google account."
So, Google now has about 4.5 million e-mail addresses of civil libertarians which it can and will contact in regard to any "internet policy initiative," including informational e-mails from it's paid advertisers on these topics and...surprise...fund-raising efforts from those paid advertisers. If you signed that petition, get ready for an onslaught of spam from just about every political organization that knows how to use e-mail.
So what's the good news? We've written extensively here on WebRev that polls are a good way to increase blog readership. Why? Because people just love to give their opinions. The petition takes the poll a step further by requiring the respondent to give their contact information in order to particiapte. This allows the petition host to gather information for a newsletter, or other e-mail contact. Of course we know all of our readers here are ethical and would not sell or share their lists without the express permission of the people on that list. Used strategically, a petition can be a way to quickly gather contact information for a target demographic.
Last week, we talked about the new feature Facebook is rolling out, Questions. If you added questions to your own profile at that time, then you will automatically be able to use the questions feature on any page on which you're an administrator. Just make sure you're using the page as the administrator (the can be done by default in your page's settings, or manually in the upper right-hand corner of your page).
If you have multiple admins on your page, however, you might want to add the questions feature to your page, to make using the feature easier for them. To do this, again, make sure you're using Facebook as your page admin, and get questions for your page. (Mashable has step-by-step illustrations.)
Once you've asked the question, you should click on it, answer it, invite the friends it applies to to answer it, then "follow" it, so that you can monitor the results, in case someone posts something inappropriate.
This might be a good time to review our talk about polling your readers and self promotion on Facebook. Remember, just because you have a nifty new feature, doesn't mean you need to use it twelve times a day, seven days a week (especially if every one else is also trying out the new feature and probably over-using it).
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
Well, here's a fun new feature on Facebook, to end the week. Go HERE on Facebook, and activate Facebook questions. Once you do, you'll see a new option for submitting items to your profile page and news feed, called "Questions." This gives you the option to ask everyone following your newsfeed any question and to make it a multiple choice or true/false question. Your friends can answer and/or share the question in their own feeds.
According to Facebook:
We noticed that people were frequently asking for opinions ("what are your favorite restaurants in New York?") or hoping to learn about their friends ("what was your favorite movie as a kid, something you watched over and over?"). For most of these questions, experts weren't going to be the best source for advice. The answers to these questions are meaningful or interesting because you know your friends and your friends know you.
We wanted to make questions easier and faster to answer. With the updated Questions you can agree with an existing answer with a single click, or you can add a different response. This makes it easy for many more people to respond to you. It also helps us show you the most popular responses...(more)
I added it to my feed, and above is an example of the form for setting up a question. This is easily accessible once you've enabled the feature by clicking "questions," then following the instructions. So, go ahead - find out where your friends like to eat locally, what movie eveyone's watching this weekend, or try something silly, like asking them what they think the next word added to the dictionary will be (hint: it won't be "LOL" or "OMG" - those are already in there).
BONUS
While you're checking out Facebook, take a look at Kim Kommando on the "creepiest" Facebook apps:
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
We're finishing up our series today on how to quickly drive traffic to a blog post, by talking about polls. As we discussed on Monday, people just LOVE to give their opinions. This is good for you, because (hopefully), you want to hear their opinions, at least as they relate to your business. So if you have a blog post that you want to promote quickly, one way to to it is to post a link to it to your various social networks, and ask for people to vote or comment on a specific question. Here are some quick and easy ways to do that.
If you want to use an actual "poll," where people vote yes/no or choose from a list of options, and you have a Web Revelation Website, Tim can help you set up a poll on the main page of your site (contact). If you're using blogging software, inserting a blog post may be one of the features available to you. Or you can use one of many free poll widgets available on the web (I like PollDaddy).
The good thing about this type of poll is that it's quick and easy for potential readers, and you're likely to get a lot of hits - especially on a controversial topic. If you can key into current events, you're likely to get more traffic on your poll. I remember for one of my group blogs, leading up to the 2008 elections, we could guarantee several hundred extra hits any time we ran a poll with the name "Ron Paul" in it. it didn't even matter what the question was. You'll want to be careful about being TOO controversial, however, because if you attract readers who are extremely passionate about the topic, they will occassionally spread the word about your poll to so many websites that it'll crash your servers, and you don't want that. Think carefully about whether the readers you're likely to attract with your question will actually be potential customers for you.
The bad thing about the above type of poll is that you only get "clicks" and you still never really hear from your new readers, personally. If personal interaction is important, you might instead include a question at the end of your post, which asks readers whether they agree or disagree and why. Or you might ask if they have a suggestion for improvement for something specific. You'll want to promote it to your social networks, making it clear that you are asking for opinions. If you do this right, you'll end up with some good discussion among your readers, that will encourage return readership, and reader loyalty.
Another way to solicit reader opinions, and drive traffic is to periodically host an "open thread." This is an alternative to a discussion forum, and gives readers a place to air their views. It's usually a good idea to set a topic, but then not to monitor the thread too closely (except to delete any vulgar or abusive comments). On some blogs, this can be a very good way to build community, and give newbies a place to "jump in."
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
Yesterday, we discussed the essay, which targets academics and is good for submission for op-ed syndication (cross-posting). Today, let's talk about four types of posts that are specifically designed to attract traffic from the search engines: review, list, link posts, and polls
Reviews
New products, services, sites, books, movies, etc., are often used as search words on the search engines. People are searching for information about these products or publications, and timely review written with SEO in mind can attract readers from the search engines and social news sites. This is an area in which if you're a new blogger, you might want to focus on the "long tail," (more niche specific, less popular) topics, as with these, you'll have a better chance of making it to the top of the search results (SERPs), because there is less competition.
Link posts are designed to attract traffic (and hopefully reciprocal links) from other bloggers. Some bloggers do a periodic roundup of some of their favorite posts on other blogs. This is a quick and easy way to do a blog post on a day when time is short, and a productive way to network with other bloggers.
Polls
People LOVE to give their opinions, and polls are a great way to solicit the opinions of your readers. Some bloggers use polls as a way to build their e-mail list (by requiring readers to provide an e-mail address to answer the poll). Others use polls to find out more aobu their readership. Note that if a poll is on a highly controversial topic, such as a political issue, it is likely that readers will e-mail their friends, or post the poll link to their social networks and discussion forums, and you may actually get more traffic than you wanted. A successful poll will pique interest, but not be so controversial as to invite "spamming" the poll.
Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.
Jennifer Pointer (
