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Google Plus for 13 Plus

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Is Google Plus no longer for adults?

Welcome the 13 year olds! Google Plus is trying to make themselves more competitive with Facebook. Though the social network is turning out to be more like a Twitter/Facebook hybrid, Facebook is still it’s #1 competitor and Twitter will likely remain a complimentary social network.

Until recently Google+ has been for 18 years and older. But staying and “adult” network was never in their long term plans. They recognize that teenagers are the biggest demographic, especially when it comes to new technology. But it does leave open the question of security.  Right now there is a lot of adult content on Google+…and we are happier for it. The tight laced nature of Facebook gets all of our panties in a bundle. But Google+ has been pleasantly more lenient. Will opening up the network to teenieboppers make them stricter parents? Well, time will tell

They are taking stricter precautions when it comes to who the teens will be able to circle. They are planning to limit it to teenagers only being able to circle other teenagers. Seems like a good start. Now what keeps someone from putting up a fake profile (ahem..remember Myspace)? Well, nothing that we can tell. But it is likely that they will have learned from their irrelevant social network pal (Myspace), that you do need some safeguards.

Opening up the social network will be beneficial as it will bring a wider audience to the network. Many people adopt a network after their kid have played around on it, look at Facebook. So hopefully this will be a boon for the network and not a big hit for all of us who like to keep the kiddies in the kiddie pool.

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Why Google+ is Bad for Porn

So how is Google+ different than Facebook?  Well, its not really.  Google+ (or Google Plus) is just as stringent on porn as Facebook. They forbid the content. They do not allow links to adult sites or explicit photos. Will they be as bad as Facebook when it comes to deleting accounts? Well time will tell.

Essentially Google+ is the new kid on the block of social networks. They are trying to compete with Facebook and not doing a terribly great job, despite endorsements from some pretty big people. Most of the activity is still happening on Facebook. Why? Because that is where everyone is! and by everyone I mean the 800+ million people around the world.  In many ways people are tied of learning new social networks. How many profiles have we created? Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumbler…and there are more. Unless it has something that is completely new and unthought of, and circles hardly counts, then it is not likely to be terribly sticky.

But beyond that Google+ is not great for businesses, much less porn. Currently they do not have a business profile option. There is no business page. So the only way you can be on there is as an individual. Then on top of that they won’t let you use a stage name. So forget privacy. Forget anonymity.

Though they are reporting that Google+ Pages for business is being released. However they will not be terribly different than Facebook Pages. Meaning, you will not be able to post adult content, links or anything. So is it a duplicate to Facebook? Not quite, but not far off.

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Sexy but Safe for Work?

Tanya Tate as the Green Lantern

Tanya Tate has a site that promotes her SFW content, opening up a whole alternate audience beyond adult.

I recently came across a twitter post about a safe for work blog.  We are use to seeing the #nsfw tag on posts that let us know when something is not safe for work.  Though this is not actually used enough, at least it is used. But what about safe for work?  Many people might ask what the benefit of a safe for work site, blog or content would be. There are a lot of benefits actually.

Tanya Tate has a blog that is specifically SFW. She blogs about conferences that she goes to, shares experiences from her life and  pictures from events.  In fact, Tanya is quite the frequent visitor to comic con’s. She even dresses up as super heroes.  This has gotten her a lot of attention from main stream press, like Life Magazine and Examiner.com

By having a SFW site, like Tanya, not only are you allowing people to safely view your content at any time but you are also opening yourself up to a potential new audience. There are people who might not be initially interested in your adult content but by offering an alternative, you now have the opportunity to introduce them to you.

Part of growing your audience base is by simply introducing yourself to them. Just because they are not looking in adult does not mean they are not interested. Give them other reasons to be interested in you.

Benefits of SFW

  • People can view your content anywhere
    Just because people want to see you naked does not mean they only want to see you naked. Being able to browse your content safely and with confidence that it is SFW can be a big benefit to your audience.
  • Be a tease
    SFW content can let you give teasers about your NSFW content. You can let people know what they can get on your other site and when they are in a location to view it, they will be able to go. But in the mean time think of it as content foreplay.
  • Its all about PR
    If your site only offers NSFW then you might be missing out on some publicity opportunities.  Even blogs and news sites that talk about adult entertainment don’t necessarily post adult content. This blog is a good example. I want people to be able to read this anywhere. Plus I want to be able to pull traffic from traditional, as well as adult, sources. So maintaining SFW content is very important.
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The Reluctant Pornstar

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Elli Nude

Friday Feature Photo: The Sexy Canadian Red-Head, Elli from Ellinude.com

I recently came across an interesting blog, The Reluctant Pornstar. As you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued.  I wondered if it was a blog by a pornstar chronicling her journey through porn, or maybe someone who did erotic photography and was being stigmatized. Perhaps it was a feminist blog about the objectification of women?  What I immediately loved was that I did not know what to expect. What the blog does demonstrate is the power of a good title.

Branding is everything. You can make or break your business and career through it. What this brand made me do was dive into her site so I could learn more.

I discovered that Elli, the Reluctant Pornstar herself, is an adult star. Though, as she will be the first to tell you, she does not identify as one. She has a website that features photos, videos, and webcam of her engaging in sexual acts. Though they mirror a lot of the traditional amateur porn sites, Elli has set herself apart by her non-porn activity.  Besides blogging, she also posts photo essays about everyday life, gardening tips and cooking videos (well, there are also erotic stories).

I have spoken about the importance of being yourself in your branding. Your personality is your biggest asset, and Elli has created a great franchise based around hers.  She is sexy and flirty, a little geeky, witty and generally playful.

Elli NudeSome examples of her reluctant pornstar side, and some of my favorite parts of her website, are her playful videos, like “Flip and Squish Eggs” or “Morning Bum”. I think I like that one because it is so distinctly Canadian.

Elli’s blogs range from everyday life in Vancouver to sexy videos and some of her more salacious exploits. Regardless of the content, they are all distinctly her.

She became the Friday Feature because I wanted to give you an example of how being yourself can be integral to the creation of your personal branding. Elli is able to attract a wide audience because her branding is so unique. The blog allows her to capture both an Adult, and non-adult audience.  Why would you want to capture an audience not looking for Adult content?  Well, if someone likes your blog, and they know that you produce adult content, there is a chance that they will be curious about it. You are more likely to get a longer term subscriber if you capture them with more than just a sexy vid or provocative picture.  If they like YOU then you become the substance behind your product.

Make sure you check out Ellinude.com and follow Eli on Twitter @ElliGirl

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The Pink is Cloudsurfing

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PV Locker LogoIn February, Pink Visual announced PV Locker, their cloud computing solution for storing porn. Though cloud storage is nothing new, cloud storage for adult content is.  Essentially, the locker is a place you can keep your porn so you don’t have to save it on your hard drive. The cloud storage also allows you to access your content from any place, and any device,  that can get internet access. Have a tablet, like an iPad? No problem.  Smart Phone? Easy peasy!

With the launch of the new PV Locker, Pink Visual did not just keep their PR releases to the standard blog, news sites and Twitter.  They began crowdsurfing.

From the beginning, the talk of the PV Locker was not just a “Here it is!” Pink Visual announced the site and then asked for feedback.  They tweeted out to their followers, asking them to look at the site and let them know what needed improvement. But it did not stop there.  Not only did they ask for feedback, they followed up. When I tweeted them about loving the site, they quickly contacted me to ask for my thoughts on improvement.

Pink Visual Tweet

This is a great use of social media for launching a site. Soliciting this kind of feedback makes me want to dig around in their site, to see if I can come up with something that might be helpful.  In the process I become more familiar with the site, and am more likely to start using it.

In the process of crowdsurfing, they have received some feedback that will help design and navigation, from increasing the size of thumbnails, to 404’s on links. They also addressed the issue of 500 mbs of storage, and said that they will be increasing that soon.

A bit about the site

When you go to the site you immediately see featured video and a series of clips. Click on price and an internal pop-up window opens up that lets you easily create an account and purchase the video. Once you buy it, it is automatically saved in your locker.  Then when you want to access your content, you login to your account and can watch to your heart’s content.

The site is easily navigable by niche, porn stars and most popular. The design is very clean and has some fun logos (like the little PV locker) integrated nicely into the pictures.

What is so significant about the PV Locker is that this represents the new direction for porn. Businesses are accessing cloud computing for file storage in increasing numbers. More people are starting to see the benefits. And as our world continues to blend mobile computing into our daily lives, cloud computing will become an integral part of that transition.  Yet again, porn is leading the technology curve. Pink Visual is on the forefront of adaptive technology.

Though now you can only store videos from Pink Visual, the site will not keep its content storage proprietary. They have plans to open up their cloud storage to other companies.

When Pink Visual says that they are designing a site for their users, they really mean it. Crowdsurfing is a great tactic to find out people’s opinions as well as potential issues that may have been overlooked. It is a great strategy to get their fans more invested in their launch, and convert them to users as well as supporters.

 

 

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Easy SEO for Porn

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SEO LegsSEO (search engine optimization) is an extremely important tool for your website. Google made this really easy with an auto-populate feature in their search bar.  All you had to do was start typing your keyword and a menu would populate below your typing with a list of potentially related search terms. This was great for figuring out some alternate search terms for your site. However, Google black listed porn. They blocked their search box from auto-populating any terms that might lead to adult content. So if you are an adult site, you have to work a little harder to research your keywords – but not that much harder.

SEO is essentially what allows your website to be found by search engines.  Most people think that SEO is finding keywords to add to meta tags on your page.  If you understanding html coding, that does not sound like a difficult thing to incorporate. However, if you do not do coding, that seems a bit more scary.  Thankfully, meta tags are not the best way to optimize your site for SEO.  Writing your keywords into your copy is the best SEO.

Most of us think that we know what the best keywords for our site will be.  Honestly, you probably know one or two, but most likely you will not guess the rest. Before Google blackballed adult terms, we could just turn to their search box.  Now you need to access SEO and keyword applications using other methods.

The easiest (and free) tool for this is Google Adwords.  Ynot just wrote a great blog post that takes you through the steps of using Google Adwords for keyword research.  Using Adwords, you can search for terms you want to use, and it will give you a list of other potentially relevant keywords and terms. You can also ask it to evaluate your website and it will give you suggestions.

If you have a blog, a great tool for optimizing your posts is Scribe SEO. This is a subscription service, but it’s not expensive, and it does a great job optimizing every post and page on your blog site. It also helps you make sure your SERP (search engine results page) is optimized for search engine listings. It also gives you suggestions for getting backlinks.

Because Scribe SEO is a subscription service you will get more robust SEO help than from just using Adwords.  However, Adwords will still give you great results for keywords and phrases. And you can’t beat free. Once you get your list of words you just need to incorporate them into the copy on your site.

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RTA – Get it? Got it? Good!

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RTA label

Recently the ASACP released their “Social Media Best Practices“. It is extremely important to keep children away from age inappropriate websites. The ASACP makes that much easier with the RTA Label.  The RTA label is a free label that identifies a site as being unsuitable for children. Not only does it identify your site, but it shows that you have done due diligence to protect children and it will help your SEO (search engine optimization) ranking.

How RTA works:

RTA means “Restricted to Adults”.  When you put the RTA label on your site you are embedding code in the header of every page that tells child protection monitoring systems that this site has adult content and it will allow the site to be automatically filtered. By alerting the plugin, your browser will not let a child go to that site.  Most browsers have safe surfing options built into their security options. There are also tool bars, plugins and widgets you can use for further security.

Why use RTA?

RTA is important to help prevent children from accessing adult sites.

RTA is also beneficial from an SEO perspective. When you use the label, you have to verify that you have properly installed it on your site.  The ASACP spiders your site to make sure that every page has the label, to prevent any accidental entry by a child.  The site is then checked to make sure that there is no content or text that would indicate child pornography or exploitation.  Once the site has been verified it will be approved.

The RTA is approval is excellent for SEO.  Getting good SEO ranking in search engines is notoriously difficult. However the ASACP has been working with the search engines to garner better search results for sites that use RTA.

Adult Entertainment supports RTA

In the adult entertainment industry we have a responsibility to make sure that our children are not exposed to inappropriate material. Adult entertainment is meant for adults over 18.  These types of images, content, videos, audio and chat rooms need to be restricted.  Parents have a responsibility to make sure that their children are surfing the net safely. But the industry also has a responsibility to make sure that we are putting up the proper safety precautions as well.

RTA is primarily funded by the adult entertainment industry.

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Sex and Facebook Ads

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scantily clad girl in a christian singles ad on facebookIf you thought having an adult Facebook page was hard to accomplish, try running an adult ad. It is almost impossible. Even running content that is considered family friendly can be really hard to maintain due to the strict rules set forth by Facebook.

To run a successful ad campaign on Facebook you have to start with the content of your page. Your content has to be deemed acceptable, and Facebook has some pretty strict guidelines. Many of these seem pretty simple and straightforward. But the reality is, when you are on the network and doing your thing, it can be pretty hard to color within the lines.

Facebook Rules for Advertising:

General Rules:

  1. Ads must directly relate to the content on the landing page.
  2. Ads must clearly represent the company, product or brand that is being advertised. Products or services promoted in the ad must be directly available on the landing page.
  3. Ads cannot insult, harass or threaten a user.

Translation:

  1. You cannot have an ad that is advertising something different than the page it is linked to.
  2. You cannot pretend you are a different company or a different person than you actually are.
  3. You cannot tease or taunt people in your ad to get them to click on the ad.

Landing Pages:

  1. Ads that contain a URL or domain in the body must link to that same URL or domain.
  2. Landing pages cannot generate a pop-up (including “pop-overs” and “pop-unders”) when a user enters or leaves the page.

Translation:

  1. If you show a web address in your ad, the ad must link to that web address. So you cannot have a web address but have the link go somewhere else.
  2. When you click on the ad it cannot take you to a page that has pop-up ads or pop-up pages.

Targeting:

  1. Any targeting of ads based on a user attribute, such as age, gender, location or interest must be directly relevant to the offer, and cannot be done by a method inconsistent with privacy and data policies.
  2. Ads with adult themes, including contraception, sex education and health conditions must be targeted to individuals at least 18 years old. Platform ads should do this via Demographic Restrictions, not by obtaining user data.

Translation:

  1. When you target an ad to your audience, it has to be directly related to the content you are advertising. So if you are advertising a dating site, it has to be directed to singles.
  2. Any ad with adult content can only be directed to people 18 and older.

Prohibited Content:

  1. Adult content, including nudity, sexual terms and/or images of people in positions or activities that are excessively suggestive or sexual, or provocative images in violation of community standards;
  2. Adult friend finders or dating sites with a sexual emphasis;
  3. Adult toys, videos or other adult products;
  4. Ads must not be false, misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive.
  5. Ads will not be permitted in cases where a business model or practice is deemed unacceptable or contrary to Facebook’s overall advertising philosophy.

Translation:

  1. Porn. Naked pictures. Sexual pictures. Naughty words. Violence…in a nut shell. Nope, probably no nut-shells either.
  2. Dildos, vibrators, strap-ons, lube, and pretty much anything you would find in a sex shop.
  3. You cannot lie in your ad.
  4. You can’t go against the code of ethics in the Facebook Terms of Service.

Most people in the adult industry will find advertising on Facebook pretty difficult. Some of you will be able to do it, depending on what your website or content is, some might not. Learning the rules are the only way to know if you can.

Stay tuned for the next post on porn stars advertising on Facebook and learn some tips and trick on how to run a Facebook ad if you are in porn.

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