I got “busy” updating other social networks which had made me not to update this post often. I even removed EC dropping from my daily routine.

The brief blogging absence made me realize that I had to define priorities in what I need to accomplish each day. I had to remove some of the tasks to make way for other activities that I need to do. This means I had to drop ECs less and even post out content less frequently.

I need to keep up with other social networks.

and plurk: http://www.plurk.com/ladyprogrammer

I don’t just submit my own content on Digg and StumbleUpon. I had to grow a profile that looks interesting, particularly on StumbleUpon. As I do this, I had to communicate with others at Plurk and Twitter. I plurk and tweet the best content from this blog and the other making money online blog.

Plus learn SEO too.

I got to use Plurk, Twitter and Facebook at the same time for a number of days. Since I got a lot of social networks in my list, I thought I could synchronize updates using only one tool – ping.fm is a good thing to keep these three updated. At first I thought that ping.fm would solve my woes of reducing a bit of work in maintaining social sites.

I was wrong.

I realized that Plurk, Twitter and Facebook are three different social sites with different sets of people. I have Twitter friends, I have Plurk friends and I have Facebook friends too. I had to maintain good relationship with those friends whom I connect with each of those three social networks, not only just posting out links of my own stuff.

As a Plurk friend had said, there can be too much social noise. I defended that too much social noise is a lot better then having no one to talk with – at least online.

Twitter:a big mixed group

I joined Twitter first, and right now I’m proud to have over a hundred Twitter followers. The Twitter group that I got are from different countries like the US, Canada, India and of course, the Philippines.

What I like best about Twitter is that this network is far well developed. There are a lot of software that is written for it, like TwitBin, TweetDeck, Twhirl (what I use) and can easily be integrated in a lot of social sites like Facebook. Also, Twitter remains to be the main choice of A-list bloggers so I get to follow their updates regularly.
Plurk: down to earth and casual

I have a different set of friends in Plurk, and since I am a newcomer, I had only 18 friends and 10 fans on my account. Perhaps if I placed my widget on one or more of my blogs then I must have grown a bigger friend and fan base. I find Plurk a much more interactive site than Twitter. If not for those A-list bloggers who use Twitter more than Plurk, then Plurk should have been a better medium than Twitter – it has more features than what I can write on this post.

I find Plurk users a lot more interactive than my Twitter friends. As soon as I had plurked out something, I often get replies in less than a minute – even from interested strangers who wants to connect with me.

Facebook: a better Friendster

Friendster remains to be the social network of choice in Asia. But to me, Facebook is a lot better. It can put links automatically from those Twitter. It can also post out links from delicious, Stumbleupon, Digg automatically. Well, a great medium to promote, IF only I have a lot of friends. I only got 18 of them in my account.

But most of my Friendster friends find it too overwhelming to maintain a lot of social networks. They are still sticking out to Friendster and I don’t think those Friendster users would like to switch or add Facebook.

Ping.fm: synchronize the social networks at once

I use ping.fm on times when I had to promote my own blog posts or share a link to all the three networks at one. I just wish that ping.fm will be able to show a Youtube and picture snapshot on Plurk and Facebook networks, than just showing a shortened link going to it.

I was offline yesterday. I decided to do put in some downtime and do preventive maintenance work. In the long run it does wonders.

What’s my preventive maintenance duty like?

• Recovering hard disk space
• deleting unneeded personal files (to make my files more manageable)
• deleting old installers, drivers and updates (they take too much space and I download new versions anyway with my fast internet connection)
• uninstalling all programs that I don’t use
• clearing out the temp files folder (which had grown to a gigabite of space) 
• clearing the trash bin
• Checking my firewall settings – making sure that it is set to optimum, just enough to let my torrents, downloads, file transfers work I still use the free Comodo personal firewall at its optimum defense setting.
• Switch to using a free antivirus program. I settled for Avira AntiVir Personal. I have a firewall anyway. It is also important to run a full scan once in a while.
• Defragmenting the hard disk. Very important. Diskeeper 2008 is still my favorite because it allows me to leave autodefragmentation on; it is also possible to defragment the page file too – which results to a faster performance that I experience myself. 
• TuneUp Utilities is an all-in-one nifty utility where I can do most tune ups like unchecking or removing programs that run on startup, optimizing my internet speed, repair, clean and reduce registry size and do check disk operations. What’s great is that I don’t need to hunt for separate programs to do each of those operations. I can even configure it to do automatic tuneups in the background.

Doing preventive maintenance regularly is one way to take care of the PC and detect any potential problems that can be seen.

Are you doing regular PC maintenance? Or do you wait for your PC to be broken? Share your thoughts.

I had mentioned previously that there are freelance SEO skills is always sought in many web design jobs. Many clients are now finding people who can optimize their sites for search engines.

Here are some job offers found in various freelance sites:

• Web designer and SEO optimization
  Need assistance updating current eCommerce website selling childrens products.  Need images optimized for website.  Need current webpages re-designed (using pappashop webhost interface) to new design parameters.  Need site optimized for search engine.
• Landing Page Specialist
  Create themed, siloed websites for specific keywords.
  Knowledge of creating landing pages that comply to Google Adwords Quality quality standards.
• Search Engine Optimization and Backlinking
  I am in need of SEO of my website. I am looking for someone to go through my website and update the PHP code with:
  1.  Keywords.  You can come up with a list and I can also give you the keywords.
  2.  Metatags.
  3.  Description.
  4. Create backlinks
  5.  Submit to search engines.
  6.  Link building

Not every trained programmer and web designer came out of school armed with an idea of what search engine optimization is. I met a lot of IT personnel who had no idea what good SEO can really do to their company websites.

UPDATE: Hoops! Almost forgot, thanks to Pastilan for emailing me a copy of SEO Optimization.

I’ve previously mentioned about my quest to learn SEO skills which is a growing demand in freelance jobs. Even before I put out that post, there are a number of people who had been asking me through email or through blog comments on any previous post that instructs them on how to do SEO. I am not really an expert on this one, and I’ve realized that SEO skills takes time – it can even take years to understand this stuff.

I keep a number of blogs that I follow all along to learn such skill. Here are some SEO sites that I keep in my Google reader:

• Tech At Hand Dot Net 
• Macuha.com
• Money and SEO
• Search Engine Guide 
• SEO Fast Start 
• The Ad Master

I only know Marghil Macuha through reading his Macuha.com blog regularly. It was from his site where I found the eBook in understanding SEO the easiest way. His blog deals more his SEO explorations though.

Dexter of Tech At Hand Dot Net is a blog that I visit regularly. This guy too, has his own SEO explorations. I find his posts useful in learning SEO. You might want to check out his SEO category – I’ve been digging through that archive a day ago and find his posts very helpful.

Engr. Cesar Noel was very helpful guy who is into this stuff for several years. He had been very helpful in giving me leads on where I could get the good SEO resources to start with.

All the remaining blogs are also worth reading. Check them out too.

Like Dexter had mentioned, on the previous post on freelance SEO skills, forums are a good way of learning SEO. Here are some good ones:

• DigitalPoint forums 
• SEO Chat forums
• Webmasterworld
• and even our own SEO Philippines Forum

Engr. Cesar Noel was also kind in mentioning SEO Guy forums. He also reminded me that the best SEO practice is producing good content.