The Olympic television viewing activity, recorded by Nielsen, finds people are online while global events are broadcasted. Marketers may find it lucrative to engage their user base on social media networks during event broadcasts. I engaged communities prior and during the Super Bowl with a client microsite and had fantastic results.
Neal Rodriguez is Managing Director of Shovecom, a full-service hybrid New York interactive agency specializing in driving a sh-tload of traffic to enterprise websites. Neal is a contributor for PBS and the Huffington Post. You could see Neal interview some of the brightest minds on cyberspace including thought-leaders in social media marketing and search engine optimization on nealrodriguez.com or follow Neal on Twitter.
I am one of the few people who didn’t throw a huge fit when the new version of Stumbleupon left beta. I admired the simplicity of the new interface and, as with most new things, decided to give the overhaul a fair shot before voicing my concerns about its limitations. In many respects, it’s much changed from the Stumbleupon the community had grown to love.
The developers at Stumbleupon attempted to make the site more social, adding in a bit of Facebook, a bit of Twitter, and some minor changes to the navigation options of your home page. The most important of these new navigation options, the Discover tab, takes users to a page with even more tabbed options: Recent Activity, Top Rated, Shares and Topics.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you don’t nearly have enough time to keep up with all of your subscriptions’ discoveries and stumbles. These options, taking you to popular websites as rated by the community, seemed the answer. Users without the benefit of extra time could now discover the most popular content as selected by their subscriptions, bypassing the time-consuming default Stumble! button and getting straight to the highest rated content. While this may have been a great idea, providing Stumbleupon users with a dynamic and unique page of popular content (it is based on your subscriptions, right?), it really just exposed the fallacies inherent to Stumbleupon. Take a look at your Top Rated tab and maybe you’ll understand where it is I’m going with all of this.
Here are some of the links I’m greeted with when hitting the aforementioned tab:
All of those pages equate to what we call blogspam. Unfamiliar with the term and what it applies to? Allow me to explain.
Image Attribution
This is a very simple lesson in content creation that we all should understand and start adhering to if we wish to rid the Internet of stolen content and, well, stolen content.
Every image on every site should have attributions for their photos. If a stumble is primarily text and utilizes one image that simply relates to the post, that is fine (though it should technically still have a credit unless the blog owner bought it on istockphoto — or a similar site — or there’s no doubt they own it by some other means).
Here’s what every image should have otherwise (image source links are usually found beneath the image but sometimes a single link will be found in a post’s introduction paragraph):
Now, if you actually took the time to visit the links I listed above, you may have noticed the insane amount of traffic each one of the uncredited posts have accumulated. Thanks to Stumbleupon’s update, these numbers are made available to anyone with the desire to do some investigating. The cumulative traffic count for the four URLs is just about 600,000 pageviews. Not too shabby for blog / site owners who create none of their own content and fail to credit other people’s content every time they steal it. I don’t know about you, but I preferred the days when I was ignorant to the amount of traffic these undeserved thumbs generated for these bogus, lazily updated sites.
So, if you’re a site owner, credit your content. And, if like most of us, you’re simply a Stumbleupon user, try to demand more from the sites populating your precious community. Without policing, it’ll just get worse.
Internet radio has been around for some time now–at least since the mid nineties actually (earlier, if you count it’s infancy)–and it has most certainly evolved from those early days of streaming into the smooth and ubiquitous service that we take for granted today. Odds are you have used, or use, streaming audio and/or video and haven’t really given it a second thought. That’s good, and once again we have social media to thank for changing the nature of the game even here. Enter social music. Internet radio with a healthy social networking aspect thrown in. A great way to listen to a giant, 64 oz. variety gulp of music and share it with your friends, and family, or the world. All this and no commercials to boot, what more can you ask for?
Lack of choice never seems to be an issue with the internet and this is no exception if you’re looking to get your music fix online. We’re going to talk about an exemplar in the field and try to give you a rundown of the features, functions, and what there is to like or dislike about them. So, without further delay, let’s take a close look at Last.fm, one of the more popular social music sites out there and quite possibly the only social music source you’ll ever need.
I love Last.fm! However, one of the primary complaints about the site’s homepage is it’s busyness. This may be my only issue with the site, but wow, there’s is definitely an excess of information to digest here. Sure, this may be because there’s so much available music to listen to—which is in no way a bad thing—but there’s a screaming background that users are force-fed as well. You can’t miss it, trust me; it’s a vert for one of those reality cooking shows. It gets on my nerves. Perhaps I’m just sensitive and my distaste for reality shows is getting in the way. Who knows?
Social music sites like Last.fm allow you listen to ‘radio stations’ based on your favorite artists. Search for an artist, song, or album and Last.fm will create a station for you which will only feature music by, or similar, to the artist you were interested in. It’s a great way to expand your music vocabulary by finding music that matches your listening preferences. If you hear something you really love, you can favorite it and it will automatically be sent to your own personal music library; one which you can return to again and again. Tagging is also supported, which is helpful for locating a particular type of sound or music. Tagging also sends items to your library.
Last.fm seems to have quite an extensive music catalog and bio’s are available for many of the artists. I found the bio sections on a few of my favorite bands to be chock-full of information. There’s plenty more information to be had as well, on practically any artist you can think of. Last.fm sports a similar artists list which, as you can surmise, provides you with a list of artists that are in some way similar to whatever artist you were checking out to begin with; another way, aside from just sitting back and listening, to find music you’re sure to like.
You can even create playlists of your favorite songs (assuming the tracks are available in full length of course, and not every track is). While playing around—bad pun intended—I created a very short playlist of songs from a handful of my favorite artists, all of which I’ve saved in my library. I can go back and fire up my playlist anytime I’m not in the mood for the more wide-ranging music selection of a standard artist station.
Now let’s talk about the social aspect of Last.fm. Create a station and you can share it with your friends by emailing directly to their inboxes, post it directly to Facebook or Twitter, bookmark it on Delicious, or you can Digg it. Can you dig it? (Zing!) You can easily tell all your friends about the great band you just discovered, and in turn they might be able to direct you to another that Last.fm just might have missed. There are also groups you can join where you can interact with other users who share your music tastes by joining in on discussions and checking out the group lists. This is, in particular, yet another way to find even more music you’ll love by tapping into the crowd. I love Guster and there’s an active discussion going on in the group right now that asks, ‘If you like Guster, you’ll like…‘. It’s word of mouth times a gabillion.
Another particularly nice feature, and one that’s incredibly easy to use on Last.fm, is the option to purchase very nearly any track you hear. This process is so easy it hurts. Hear a song you like, click the Buy Track dropdown and then choose where to buy the track from: Amazon MP3, 7Digital, or iTunes. Prices are around the 99 cent mark, which is about what we’ve come to expect from other music sources.
That pretty much covers the basics. But, fair warning, Last.fm can be addicting–the more you use it, the better able it is to recommend music to you. Couple this with the fact that you can take your music tastes with you anywhere you can access the internets and you might just grow a third ear for music (I kill me, I really do).
Ncomment is back with his second installment of his WAR series. Reddit has invaded the world of Digg and sent Diggers into hiding to plan a revolution against the alien and robotic army of Reddit invaders. With division of Diggers at an all time high, the Reddit army was able to invade the Digg city and bring it to its knees in a single day.
Ncomment has been able to perfectly capture the political and social issues surrounding social media in his comics since the time they were first introduced. Somehow, he’s hit the nail on the head each time. If you look carefully at his comics, some things are subtle and others not-so-much. Not only does he capture social media issues, he also includes avatars and logos of well-known publications and social media users.
From TechCrunch Candy Bars, BuzzEdition Beer, The Drill Down Bilboards, Nowsourcing street signage, and The Huffington Post Copy Center, Ncomment has been spot-on. WAR part 2 is packed with social media references and well known sites. Mixx.com has become a refugee camp where Lt. General Panda has begun work on his ultimate weapon (powered by bacon) while the Social Blend news van is parked out front. We even get a look at the Holy Grail itself — the Digg algorithm.
So how does he do it? Ncomment applies one of the best known rules of the Internet, #32, “Lurk Moar.” And boy does he lurk. Only by doing so has he been able to capture the essence of social media so perfectly — its users. He engages them, gets to know them and then folds them perfectly into his comics. He even takes a stab at Ashton Kutcher and his Twitpics. No one is safe.
WAR Part 2 hit the Digg Front Page and was met by rave reviews of Diggers and Redditors alike.
“Best thing I have seen on Digg all week! LMAO!” says Digger Sexualwasabi.
“I saw this headline and I honestly thought, ‘please God let this be ncomment’ – very well done!” says Jaybol.
WAR Part 2 has been eagerly awaited by social media enthusiasts, more so than the New Moon movie by teenage girls. Ncomment delivers, and we can’t wait for Part 3.
In my last post here on CT, I spoke of not being afraid to jump right into the social media pool and start paddling, not worrying about whether you really knew what was going on or what’s what. So I thought I’d continue that trend and talk (briefly) about that beacon of social media possibilities, lighting the way for all others, that pinnacle of Web 2.0 achievement, the place to be on the Net, because if you’re not–and we’re just being honest here, right?–you’re a nobody, a boob, and a general failure as a 21st century human being. Alright, a bit too far with that last one.
I’m talking about Twitter, my friends, and while I may have put the shine on a bit too thick just now, one might be remiss in underestimating the value and power of Twitter. Now I’m not going to tell you what Twitter is; everybody probably has at least a general idea of it, except perhaps David Letterman.
This isn’t a guide by the way, I figure that’s been done already, and more skillfully than I could probably manage. Also I realize that many of our readers will be familiar with all this, but maybe, just maybe, some of you don’t know. Maybe some of you are like Dave there, afraid of Twitter or anything social media-like. Let us not forget the beginner’s mind; it never hurts to review the basics right?
One of the complaints I’ve encountered when people talk about trying Twitter, or not as the case may be, is that they simply don’t know what to say. Or having said something, they fear they will look the fool for throwing it out there into the great Twittersphere. I understand; know that you are not alone friends, Twitter can be a little intimidating for some, and there is a non-trivial learning curve. I know after creating my Twitter account that I felt a bit overwhelmed and not a little confused by it all. Pile on top of that the fact that it’s kind of hard to follow conversations that you encounter with people you follow because they’re talking to someone else(this is less of a problem now, especially given the plethora of high quality Twitter clients available).
I introduced a close friend of mine to Twitter a while back, and noticed she wasn’t really tweeting much—OK, not at all really aside from her introductory, ‘Hey world!’—and since we communicate regularly through other means, like the primitive phone, I asked her why that was. She told me she wanted to tweet, but every time she brought up the update box, she just froze. She couldn’t think of anything important enough to say, and didn’t think anyone would be interested in what she was doing every minute of the day.
Behold, two common misconceptions regarding Twitter! You don’t have tweet about everything you do, and if you did, you would be right that no one would want to know what you’re doing every minute, and you would end up alone and followerless. But, if some of your friends were following you they might want to know that you are, (a) under the weather, (b) dying, or (c) just having a crappy day in general. Your tweets don’t have to be earth shattering revelations, or hot breaking news, unless perhaps you are @MSNBC (in that case carry on). You don’t have to sit and wait for the muse to hit you on top of the head with profound and pithy attestations (I looked at my word-a-day calendar this morning). Think of Twitter as a community of potential friends. I mean they don’t call it social networking for nothing right? Instead of worrying about being important or popular, why not share a link to a site or video you thought was interesting; if you thought it was interesting, somebody else just might as well. See an article that made you so angry you wanted to scream? Link it in a tweet, make others aware of it.
Keep in mind that we’ve been coming at Twitter from a more or less personal angle. More and more businesses are hopping on the social media wagon; maybe your company already has. It would behoove anyone in today’s market to familiarize themselves—at least somewhat—with the flexibility and power of Twitter, and other social media outlets. Earlier this year, Business Week put together a special report which speaks directly to executives on the wonders and possibilities of social media for their companies and/or brands.
And it’s not just larger corporations that are slowly realizing the benefits of social media involvement; small businesses are picking up on the vibes and possibilities well. Again from Business Week, this article discusses some advantages for business owners and tips on how to get started, and why. And if you check out that article you might notice the advice uncannily echoes a running theme in this post, and my last one: Don’t worry about the small stuff, jump on in and get wet.
Here are links to a couple of guides for Twitter. There are a gabillion of them on the Net, but these were most helpful to me. Good luck!
Jamie slogs through cyberspace in his free time, learning whatever he can, writes short stories, and tends his own blog www.residuetiger.com. You can follow him on Twitter as well: @residuetiger.
We’ve all seen it. What once worked in social media six months ago doesn’t work now. Why, for instance, does a large following on Twitter no longer indicate influence? Or why is blogging no longer as impressive as it was in 2003? Both these examples follow a predictable economic formula:
As “x” social behaviour multiplies, its social value approaches zero.
Let me break that down for you. The more you do the same thing, people’s appreciation of it lessens. The more you do the same song and dance, don’t be surprised if your audience dwindles. This should be obvious, but it’s not.
LiveJournal: An Example
Most of us think of LiveJournal as the walking corpse of the social media world, but it wasn’t always so. It was one of the first platforms to combine blogging with social networking. More fascinatingly, people who had a LiveJournal felt it gave them status: in order to have one, you had to be invited.
Then it happened. Danga Interactive, LiveJournal’s parent company, removed the invite requirement. Soon everyone who wanted one could have one. This was the beginning of the end.
The problem was everyone wrote about the same things: breakfast, cute kittens, and favourite movies. LiveJournal succeeded in the task of being a journal, but as the novelty of public journalling wore off, so did its perceived value. Soon, users left LiveJournal for the unique feature set of MySpace — and we all know what happened to MySpace.
State of the Social Media Union
Most popular social media tools have their time in the sun then go through a slow rigor mortis. Usenet was once the reason people paid for Internet. Chatrooms were how people dated online. MySpace was a “place for friends”. What happened?
Everyone was doing it, and everyone was behaving the same way. Usenet became so burnt out over flame wars, the term “troll” was coined and “Godwin’s Law” became a law. The acronym “ASL” became such an overused greeting in chatrooms, their very purpose became sexual gratification. As for MySpace, “making friends” became the basis of many a Catch a Predator episode.
We are seeing the same pattern of behavior happen on Twitter, Digg, and Facebook — and if people keep doing the same things, those social networks will soon have less social value than they currently have now.
How Can We Add Value?
The social media slide into rigor mortis is not inevitable. The only way to reverse the lessening of social value is to give your audience value. That is to say, behave in a different way from everyone else. If a platform is flexible enough for innovative forms of communication, and if communities are courageous enough to move beyond their own cliches, social media can thrive.
Want to remain relevant in social media? Behave differently.
Social media gives us the ability to practice in public more than ever before. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
If you’ve ever read The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen (I just finished reading it), you get a pretty clear read on what he thinks of most user-generated content: very little. His concerns range from the welfare of professional content creators (who are losing out to massive quantities of amateur content) to the disintegration of Western civilization by narcissistic neophytes who post amateur videos and pictures on Facebook, YouTube and MySpace whilst reducing their (and our?) collective IQs. If you buy his arguments, there are some pretty serious problems that Web 2.0 and social media have to be held accountable for.
But the rise of the amateur isn’t one of them. Amateurs have always been around. They’re just more visible now.
There’s no doubt that modern Web technologies have made it monumentally easier to create content in a fraction of the time that it used to take to create audio programs, short movies, or magazine articles. There’s definitely a plethora of user-generated content (the term often used to described all of the comments, articles, videos, posts, etc. made available on ostensibly free websites) on the Web and yes, some of it stinks. Some of it is excellent and there’s probably a big pile of stuff in the middle that’s mediocre at best.
A lot of crap was made prior to Web 2.0 as well. Tons and tons of it. There may have been less amateur content in years past than there is now because the enabling technologies that make it a snap to publish photos, videos, blogs, and podcasts didn’t exist or weren’t affordable a decade ago. But it was certainly around.
Amateur video. Homemade comedy cassettes. Fanzines. APAzines. Community theatre. Community-access TV. College radio. Open mike nights at comedy clubs.
There have always been places for the unpaid creator to practice their avocation. There have always been people who slave over these hobbies because, well, they’re fun things to do. Funny thing: many of them went on to become bona fide professionals, earning a living using the skills that they developed during their hobbies. The production of dreck is an accepted side-effect of practicing and honing your skills as you try to become better.
The only major change is that people can now practice in public on a much larger scale than the previous generation could ever have done. They do stuff for free because they love to and because they see it as a means to an end, the next step on a long, daring journey to mastery.
Alternatives to mainstream media have always existed but social media, Web 2.0, and high speed Internet have made it easier than before to publish.
I don’t deny that social media has allowed some content to come to light that might have been better buried in a locked drawer somewhere out of reach. But I don’t think that giving the amateur a chance to air his or her work in public is, at heart, a bad thing. I think it’s a great opportunity for people who have dreamed of a chance to reach a larger audience. It may make for a noisier world and it may force professionals to turn things up a notch to compete, but the enabling technologies are here to stay. The genie’s out of the bottle; might as well enjoy the ride.
In the grand scheme of things I am but a babe when it comes to social media. A rookie. A noob, if you will, though to spare my fragile feelings I’d just as soon you didn’t, really. Nope, no expert opinions here folks, just me stumbling along, trying to learn what I can. Like some great person of yore once said, “I’m just a worm crawling through the dirt of life.”(Actually that was me, I used it as a tag line on one of the many social media outlets I’ve tried, and may perhaps still use, I’m not really sure, but feel free to use it for your own purposes if you like.) But this is a good thing actually. In Zen Buddhism there is a concept known as beginner’s mind, and it means, basically, that the mind of someone who is new to something (a beginner), is free of the rigidity and ‘old-hat’ mentality of the expert who has seen and knows much. They are open to new things and new ways, and the ever-changing sea of social media is inherently new. Isn’t it?
The metaphor of the sea is particularly fitting because not only is social media, and with it the Internet, constantly changing and growing, it also implies a flow. A constant flow of information: emails, images, blurbs, and yes… tweets. We often find ourselves buried beneath a relentless tide of information. Will it ever stop, or do we even want it to really? More importantly, how do you handle it all?
If you’re anything like me, the Internet has reduced your attention span to that of a gnat; there’s just so much to look at. Sometimes I feel like a cat in a room full of laser pointers. No, really! Even when I sit down at the keyboard with a plan, fully intent of looking up one thing – just one thing! — if I’m not careful, I end up clicking 57 links, only snapping out of the trance once done digesting the Evolution of Toilets (via lovetoknow.com).
This isn’t a new idea though, is it? The Internet has been driving us mad with choice from day one. But now we have social media thrown into the mix; Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace just some of the names which come to mind. Naming all of them would be another post altogether (actually that would be another venture-funded web project and a lifetime of work—venture capitalists, feel free to email me, we’ll talk). It’s a wonder we get any work done today at all.
It can be done, and trust me, there are greater minds than this one working on it. David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done, advises that one must be judicious in choosing who and what we interact with online, and even he acknowledges that it’s a slippery slope.
The most obvious issue about social media: Is this a useful way to spend your time, or is it a sinkhole of attractive distraction? It could very easily be one of those one minute, and the other the next! It all depends on why you’re doing it, and this must be evaluated moment to moment. It’s an important distinction to make for yourself, because focus is probably your greatest asset that you can control. You must be judicious about where you place it and what you let grab it, thus reducing your effectiveness.
A while back over on Mashable, author, speaker, and Wall Street Journal columnist Alexandra Levit wrote a post on managing your time and your social media fix. It basically echoes Allen’s advice: draw up some boundaries, and mind your commitments. This is, of course, easier said than done.
Simplification and discipline are key here ( listen to me now, as if I know what I’m talking about all of the sudden), especially given the fact that more and more of us are packing smartphones with instant access to emails, tweets, instant messages, and the whole of the Internet. It’s a conundrum, and I’m afraid I don’t have any hard and fast advice; I’m still trying to manage my own habits, while I struggle to maintain some semblance of a regular blog posting schedule—and if you’ve seen my blog, you’ll see what a bang up job I’m doing there—keep up with news, and trends, and friends, and preventing the slow creep of insanity that comes with wanting, and inevitably failing to read every last blip, chirp, snort, buzz, squawk, squeak, and bleep that we can get our hands on.
And that, my friends, is the heart of the matter isn’t it? We can’t read it all, but something about these here interwebs makes us want to—that’s probably another post, we might come back to that. What is it? The interactivity, the instant gratification, the variety? Hell, I don’t know, but as a diminutive Jedi Master once said, ‘Control, control, you must learn control!’
I leave you with a small collection of the better suggestions I’ve found in one place that deal with this very thing. From Mashable again, a few suggestions on how to handle your voracious social media appetite and still get at least a few things accomplished. Now if you don’t mind, I’m really jonesin for some Twitter time…and I forgot to email that one dude, oh and I need to…nevermind, I’m done here!
I’d like to thank you all for your patience through the times that this site has been quiet. Many of the original authors have gone on and are quite busy, but I didn’t see why that had to be the end of our community.
After about 2 years of reflection, we’ve seen where our strengths and weaknesses were, and wanted to give you a list of what the new Collective Thoughts will be about:
1 – Updates. Things slowed to the point where we were updating only monthly. Look for many more frequent posts in our new organization.
2 – Focus. While the post focus is still going to be revolving around social media, what’s meant by focus is the authors and their perspectives. I feel that we had the SEO / Social contingent, but this time around, we have a more rounded model across the realm of social – including more that are new to the game, PR types and the like.
3 – Bells and Whistles. We’ll be making some changes and tweaks to the overall UI as well as adding in some of the latest new fangled fun gadgets.
4 – Authors. In the past, we have not had guest posts. We’re changing things up a bit adding more regular and guest authors, though at this point it is by invite only. If you’re interested in contributing, contact us.
Looking forward to coming back into the fold with you!
The idea of group learning has fascinated me since high school when I realized how much faster and better I could prepare for a test if I studied with friends.
Maybe that’s why when I happened upon the first Plurkshop last spring, I was hooked. And then when I heard Mack Collier (of The Viral Garden and the new MackCollier.com) was leading a weekly workshop on blogging, I knew I had to check it out.
Perhaps, like me, you’ve been to workshops where someone “leads” (ie has complete control of the conversation) and the only real communication that happens is when the leader asks a question and allows the participants to answer it.
When you attend a blogchat, forget that idea. Instead, picture a giant round table discussion, limited only by the number of people who are interested in the subject.
To enter, all you have to have is twitter, although it’s handy to use a chat program such as Tweetchat to make the tweets easier to read. Tweetchat will also append #blogchat to the end of every comment you send from their page, so you won’t forget to add it.
I also recommend bookmarking What The Hashtag to easily be able to read the transcript from previous blogchats and even subscribe via RSS.
Categorizing and Tagging Blog Content
Sunday’s night’s blogchat was one of my favorites of the ones I’ve attended so far. Not just because the topic is one I’ve wondered about before, but also because it seemed to have a more relaxed feeling (or perhaps I’m starting to feel more comfortable and “among friends” at them so I’m relaxing).
Sunday night was also the first chat that I really noticed splitting in several directions at times. Last year when we were having Plurkshops, that would often happen, with one person wanting more info on a subject while someone else had an entirely new question.
As a result though, I’m only going to share some of the discussion on the original subject. If you’d like to read all of the chat, you can find the transcript here.
As usual, Mack started us out by announcing the topic and who suggested it. “Tonight’s #blogchat topic is from shannonrenee, we’ll be discussing categorizing and tagging your content. Strategies and tips.”
As a blog reader, how important are tags & categories to you?
Shanan_S: Pretty darn important. If I’m a new reader chances are I came to your blog for info about something specific.
ad_web: Sometimes a quick look at categories and tags on a blog tells me what the blog is about or what is normally posted there.
Eric_Urbane: I tend to follow bloggers, not tags or categories.
hacool: I find it easier to find older entries on blogs with categories for broad topics and tags for more detailed topics.
GrantGriffiths: Consumers don’t use RSS, bloggers do and that is why categories will continue to be important.
Mandy_Vavrinak: I start with categories to browse new blog, tags for finding specific content.
GrantGriffiths: Very important when you look at the big picture. Easier for reader to find content.
GrantGriffiths: Categories are and should be used as the index to your blog. Much more important than archives for that purpose.
markalves: When reading a blog for 1st time, you get a quick sense of scope (types of categories) and depth (# per category)
What’s the difference between categories and tags?
Teeg: I haven’t quite figured out the purpose of tags, it seems a repeat of categories often.
3keyscoach: What makes best presentation so tags are useful to people?
markalves: Categories are table of contents, tags are the index.
30lines: I tend to agree with that approach. Categories= more general, tags = more specific.
Teeg: Why not use nested categories for that? I guess that’s why I get confused by having both.
hacool: I’d think of categories as broad topics: produce, meat, canned goods and tags as detailed: lettuce, bacon, chicken soup
Teeg: So tags can be things I might only use once, while categories are topics I’ll cover again and again? Okay, I can see that.
hacool: I might have unique subcategories that could pull a unique menu, but use tags across multiple categories.
MackCollier: So then we should go for fewer categories, and be liberal on tagging?
AngEngland: If you cover several food categories but wanted $5 dinners in several “Chicken, Beef” categories, use tags.
hacool: The categories are like topic funnels and tags can connect across channels.
How important are categories and tags in terms of SEO?
FreshPeel: Categories and tags definitely add to SEO. Indirect benefit to readers?
AngEngland: If tags/keyword lists don’t match content Google can penalize u.
FreshPeel: In my blog, tags are only visible in the code and used for SEO and recommending similar posts to readers.
Eric_Urbane: Our blog, NOT related to our company and our tags have now brought us to page one, number one to three on Google search
MackCollier: Which has more SEO punch on a blog, tags or categories?
FreshPeel: I’d say Google gives more value to content, but as with all things SEO, it’s not an either or.
GrantGriffiths: Content written for the human reader and not the search engines is most important for the SEO. If human likes, Google likes.
hacool: I think it depends on how one codes the tags and categories. (IE semantic markup, H1, H2, H3, p, etc.)
Eric_Urbane: So should Blog Content have keywords and phrases laced within the body of the blog post?
MackCollier: Eric, my view is when you start trying to place keywords in a blog, you dilute the content’s impact. Not worth it, IMO.
Eric_Urbane: So should categories align with keywords?
hacool: If keywords and categories align naturally I think it makes sense, but I think we must write for humans 1st bots 2nd.
How many categories and tags?
Eric_Urbane: So how many categories should each blog post have for optimal SEO?
GrantGriffiths: Use 1 category and try to limit tags or keywords to around 5 for SEO.
FreshPeel: Too many categories can make it seem like your blog has no focus.
MackCollier: So each post should only have ONE category for maximum SEO benefit?
FreshPeel: I think 8 is a good number. AT 17 categories, I need to slim mine down.
markalves: Make blog categories list fit on 1 screen
Resources
I always come away from blogchats with a new list of links to check out. Here are some that were mentioned Sunday:
In closing, let me apologize for anyone who was at Sunday’s chat that I left out. Even after all the times I’ve reread the transcript, I’m still noticing new items.
By the way, if you’re free Sunday evening, we’d love to see you there.
Teeg is a Social Media Explorer who has been exploring the social part of the web since 1996, when she first discovered chat rooms. She details her exploration of various social media sites on SU Comments and Social Media Mom.
Welcome to the new wisdom of crowds. Each member of Collective Thoughts is here because not only are they a known or rising star in their own field, but they also have a passion and unique understanding on social media. Together, we make up Collective Thoughts. More
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To enter, all you have to have is twitter, although it’s handy to use a chat program such as 
