Monday, October 13th, 2008
All too often, I come across blog posts that are simply a regurgitation of some breaking news or someone else’s earlier thoughts.
Shouldn’t a blog be more? I sure think so.
Sure, sure…content is king. But shouldn’t it be original content? As we are nearing the 1 year anniversary of Collective Thoughts, I wanted to share with you a peek into very selective process in finding great bloggers to head it up. The single most important factor was that each contributor was totally original and the real thing. You know it when you see it. That said, here are the aha moment that I had in when reading the work of my esteemed colleagues:
Andy Beard – For me, Andy has had more thought provoking posts than any of the contributors here, so it was really special for me that he’s part of the team. If I had to pick one post there, it would be the WordPress Masterclass post. An oldie but goodie, and may show many of you how little you know about WordPress after all 
Brendan Picha – Brendan is also a newcomer, and showed his stuff with a Digg submission that made it to Diggnation!
Dave Harry – While Dave is a relative newcomer to Collective Thoughts, I’ve been a fan of his writing for quite some time. The Sphinn awards got my attention – great way to get a community buzzing!
Mark Laymon – Mark is quite a character. For those of you that don’t know him, you probably know of him as the guy that relentlessly throws sheep and pokes you in Facebook. This post on getting a PDF to the front page will live on forever in my memory. I’ll bet every commenter on Digg had their jaw to the floor when it happened
Shana Albert – As we all know, everyone loves Shana. Shana is a rare talent that has an outstanding writing ability to capture the human spirit. She actually started writing on Collective Thoughts prior to the almost immediate debut of Social Desire. Would have to say that my favorite post of hers has been how social media is like high school.
Tim Nash – I believe that his name will forever be associated with StumbleUpon. Who can forget the Stumbleupon Algorithm post? No doubt that this was a different thought than the crowd.
What post has been the aha moment for you? We’d love to hear from you.
Posted in Social Media | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
(image credit: iPhotograph)
When it comes to hearing about success in social media, we’ve all heard the mantra everyone uses: “content is king.” And yes, there is truth in that statement. How can anything be expected to virally spread like wildfire with crappy content?
Imagine, if you will…the content court jester. How many times have you been surfing around through StumbleUpon and come across a patently obvious sponsored stumble? Yes, StumbleUpon says that these things will happen for 1 in 20 stumbles. Does that mean that a paid stumble has to be a content court jester? Of course not. It was just poor planning on the marketer that spent more time on the campaign than the actual content.
Face it. Nobody likes to be sold. Let people see what you have to offer and have them make their own decisions. The best marketing out there is so subtle or enjoyable, you don’t even realize (or mind) that you are being marketed to.
Now, this isn’t to say that content court jesters do not have their place in the world. It could just be that a company is doing a landing page test to see how well they are converting. Such companies should be warned: social media users are well armed with thumbs down, snarky comments, and adblock, so they had best do their business in the most attractive way possible.
Remember boys and girls..”content is king.” Just because the page was promoted through social media doesn’t mean it it doesn’t convert. Conversions happen. Conversations at the least will happen, and you’ll hear what people really think of you.
(Image credit: wwwigz)
And now, for something entirely different…
Back to our StumbleUpon point. The whole idea of this article came about after I saw what appeared to be a sponsored stumble from Nokia. Then, I looked at its Stumble record:
If you’ve been around StumbleUpon enough, you’ve probably seen this page by the likes of Nokia and others. Nokia isn’t stupid. So why such a sales page on StumbleUpon? Conversions. Sure, people thumbed it down. At the end of the day, if they are a high enough conversion rate, it may be well worth it for them. Even if conversion is poor, people are talking about them and they have some valuable analysis on their hands.
Social media marketing eventually comes down to ROI, like any other marketing.
Granted, a more subtle page may return a higher ROI, of course the only way to know would be to test both side by side.
The king may rise and fall from power. Perhaps the court jester makes sense: he pays his bills 
Posted in Social Media | 12 Comments »
