DISQUS

The # infront of names, places, events or things is a "Hashtag".

Here's an explanation of hashtags for you: http://twitter.pbworks.com/Hashtags

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Shannon

Hmmn, not sure. I know that both YouTube and Flickr may crack down with their terms of use and especially if you are running a large contest that they are aware of, like the large corps do (they may want you to pay). If they are cracking down on their terms of use and you don't follow it, you may be out of luck.

Sorry I can't help you, this idea may be outdated now...I cannot speak for Flickr per se and you should follow their terms of use. And since they are a big company, you may not get them via email (Unless you have a large budget and do some co-branding with them).

This solution above was for a small contest and it is simple procedure asking users just to tag the images with your unique tag, and then you mash it up on your own website.

You wouldn't let others upload pics to your account.

What you'd do is get them to tag the pics with a unique phrase for your contest (something no one else would use) then you can aggregate the pics under one tag and you can pull a feed (or widget) on your contest page to see and show who all submitted them.

They would have to upload their pics under their profiles in flickr in this scenerio.

Wayne

I believe it is the " :D" you are talking about and it is a wide happy smile...more than the ":)" smile.


Cheers
Shannon

Great points Mike!

Also, from an online marketing standpoint, make sure you ask the right questions to see how SEO friendly the CMS platform is - that is, how friendly it is to a online marketer to tweak (vs. having to run to a coder to implement all and costing you money and time).

If you have someone on staff that does your SEO (or a third party) get their advice as before building or committing. They'll probably look at it in a different way and give you some ideas on what to look for in features or modules (ie. easy way to do page redirects, renaming permalinks, easy access to change page titles and descriptions, auto-generation of sitemap.xml for search indexing)

Cheers
Shannon@sitemasher

I am a huge advocate of what you are saying too. Unfortunaelty tons of people say they get it around me but don't understand the time that is needed what-so-ever.

It takes time to massage and committ every single day within the social sphere. Those people I am talking about, just think they can open up an account, broadcast and watch the traffic come in - they are fricken nuts! Nothing comes easy and genuine interaction is needed and no hard sell stuff - please people!

You are so right Gary - those people and companies will be left in the dusk when others grasp and take the time to interact.

Awesome case study from my own experience: Two weeks ago, I asked another tweet how was her experience with Zappos, and sure another the CEO followed me. I twittered him and asked if he is using tweetbeep for alerts and he responded yes - WOW - so impressive that the CEO is at ground level talking to people. He is very quick to respond and is married to twitter and realizes the power! Sure enough, if I needed to buy shoes online or wanted to - where would I go- hmmn probably Zappos!

Cool. I bumped into this post - I am a starbucks addict and going to get msyelf the Grande Getter Application - thanks!

I totally agree with Lucretia. Social media is scalable in my mind, there's no breaking point really.

The scaling factor is definitely up to you on being available to respond to and interact with - even if that needs be recruiting others to help on your side.

Now the real hurdle is to convince your boss or CEO for the help (that's probably the #1 show stopper I am sure)!

Hi George

Thanks for the feedback. FYI - We are not officially launched and in pre-release ... we'd love to hear your comments on your experiences and all when you get back into it!

Cheers

shannon