I was doing a little experiment the other day. I had inserted the brain from a cadaver into this robot I’ve been building…wait, that’s more appropriate for my other blog.
I was doing a different experiment to see if I could reduce the number of API calls TweetDeck makes to Twitter on my behalf. (I know, I’m a geek.) I figured that since a request to Twitter for my mentions (@therichbrooks) takes one API call and a search on “@therichbrooks” doesn’t require any API call, that I could just substitute one for the other.
In other words, searching for “@therichbrooks” should bring back the same results as seeing all my mentions, right?
Turns out…not so much. This is a recent example of my mentions column vs. my @therichbrooks search on TweetDeck. I’ve highlighted the tweets that only appear in one column.
You’ll just have to take my word for it that the last few in the right (search) column didn’t appear further down the page in the mentions column.
I can’t seem to find any rhyme or reason: it’s not specific to whether the tweets start with @therichbrooks, whether they’re a RT, whether I follow the person, or whether the tweet comes from a beautiful woman.
I also ruled out the possibility that it was TweetDeck; the mentions page and search at Twitter.com showed the same results as above.
At this point I’m actually keeping both columns up and running on TweetDeck so I don’t miss any other mentions. I just wonder what important messages and opportunities I’ve missed already. 
The other day a friend asked me how to add photos and videos into a tweet on Twitter.
Having just downloaded the newest iteration of 
Every day your prospects use search and social media to get answers.
How NOT to Leave a Comment on a Blog
Thursday, December 10th, 2009Some things to keep in mind:
Thus, it’s no surprise that unscrupulous marketers (and even some with scruples) leave a lot of comments on other blogs for the sole purpose of increasing the search engine visibility of their own site or blog.
Never mind that almost every blog in the world uses a no-follow ref tag in the comments section, basically neutering the SEO benefits of a comment.
That being said, not everyone seems to have gotten the memo. There’s still benefits to leaving a comment, however:
That last bullet point needs to be repeated, this time with some emphasis:
And that’s the trick. You need to be intelligent, insightful and on message. Although every blogger has his or her own rules for when to leave a comment up there, I’ve always been open to destroying a comment with extreme prejudice if they seemed more interested in promoting their own work than continuing the conversation I started.
For example, I recently received this comment on a post on How to Add Photos and Videos to Your Tweets:
Besides the atrocious grammar, it’s hard to take someone serious who:
Not to mention it has nothing to do with the post at hand. If this were a post on email marketing, or bulk email marketing tools, this would be perfectly appropriate.
If you are going to leave comments on other blogs, please add something of value. It helps the blogger, his/her audience, and may actually do some good for you as well.
Rich Brooks
Small Business Blogger
Tags: Comment Spam
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Marketing | 16 Comments »