Why haven’t you frontpaged yet? I want to go for a swim already.
The short answer: no.
The longer answer:
So I’ve been out for most of the week on vacation. Which got me to thinking - can you really take a vacation from social media?
I mean, how can you expose yourself to risking all those great tech/news nuggets like Wordpress 2.5 Release Candidate?
Once you have social media in your system, it’s hard to step away from all those RSS feeds and social sites.
Especially when most hotels have free wifi (in the USA anyway, thanks for pointing this out, Tim). They’re in on it too. A hotel employee actually asked me if I had wireless, which was pretty amusing. In any case, it’s important to break away from social media from time to time.
Perhaps we take ourselves too seriously in social media. We blog, podcast, Twitter, lifestream, RSS, aggregate, rant, and vote. Does the “outside world” think we are nuts? Probably.
Are we the news source? We break the news. Sometimes we even make the news. Trying to separate the signal from of the noise isn’t easy, and this is what we are tasked to do. So I ask you again, are we the bloggers, the real news source?
All told, it’s good to be back… even though I never really left
To many Internet Marketers,Twitter has become important. Some people may not yet understand, but this may just be part of their journey through the social media learning curve. As with any social media application, site influencers got to where they were by putting in the time to understand the community. Twitter is no exception.
Let’s take a look at 7 Steps that Make Twitter Work:
Step #1. Twitter is more than personal updates. Sure, some people like to put in cat updates or say what they are eating for lunch, but Twitter is much more than that. Blogs used to have much the same stigma pinned on them, but one day the world woke up and understood the power of simple publishing + citizen journalism. Microblogging has reduced the time to market of content down to minutes and seconds, a huge improvement over blogs which brought it down to hours from previous forms of communication.
Twitter is a great place to:
-broadcast breaking / important news
-hire people
-get advice (on just about anything)
-run a poll
-rag on others
-promote yourself
-promote others
Step #2. Now that you have your head on straight, socialize. Chances are, if you participate in the social media community, people you know are already on Twitter. While Twitter doesn’t have the best way in the world to find people, sometimes the best way is to just see who your friend is following.
Step #3. Don’t just sit there, say something. Join the conversation. Without being too noisy, get in there. Nobody is going to ask you to the dance if you are just sitting around. See what people are talking about, jump in with some “@’s” (replies to a user) and perhaps some direct messages too.
Step #4. Now that you’ve said something, quiet down. Like any social media site, know the community and follow its norms.
Step #5. Know the difference between a push vs a pull mechanism. When you post a link to your latest blog post to Twitter, you are doing a push. An action meant to grab the reader. They can ignore it, but people that like what you bring to the table will check you out. Instantly.
RSS on the other hand is a pull. Users will check RSS at their own pace and it will take more time to get buzz around your content.
Step #6. Fine tune, and read what’s out there. Here’s the part where you get to see where others have broken ground already, leaving valuable information for you along the way.
My suggested reads:
-Jeremiah Owyang on how he uses Twitter
-Shana’s awesome post about 26 reasons why I love Twitter
-DoshDosh put together a fine list of 17 ways to use Twitter.
Step #7. Put it all together and measure your results. As the title of the post mentioned, I promised a 438% growth in followers in a 30 day period. Here was my progression:
After looking through this list a few times, I thought that both Twitter addicts and those that may not even use Twitter at all might be left with a few questions. Here’s my attempt to answer a few:
Q: 438% growth doesn’t just magically happen. How did you do it?
A: Well, I’ll tell you:
1 - Followed people I knew
2 - Adjusted my level of noise
3 - Thanked people for following me
4 -Kept the conversation going with those that replied quickly
5 - Instigated a few fights
6 - Chatted with better known people
7 - Unfollowed those that were bothersome / too noisy
8 - Crosslinked on my blog and other social media profiles
9 - Did a bit of brand management / data mining, keeping a keen eye on Tweeterboard stats, Terraminds info, and Tweetstats graphs
10 - Retweeted things that I felt were important that my followers might have missed from my Twitter friends
Q: Ok, so you got some new Twitter followers. If I post a link, maybe I get 5-10 visits to my blog. Why should I care?
A: The reason that you should care isn’t the direct traffic, but rather the indirect influence. If you Tweet a link to a new blog post, people will rush to submit it to social sites. This is changing the “pull” dynamic inherent in RSS (which may become passive for folks that are too busy to keep up on RSS) to a “push” dynamic through Twitter - but to people already interested in you. What’s more is that your followers may see your Tweets as a call to action, and begin to submit / vote for post you may have.
As I was waiting with my son in his Doctor’s waiting room I started reading one of the many pamphlets that they had sitting around. I happened to pick up one of the pamphlet’s titled Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I smiled as I read it as I always felt that I was obsessed with Social Media. And, even though I haven’t been diagnosed with OCD I suppose having it might be a possibility. That possibility got me thinking… What if Social Media were a disorder?
And, the inside of the Pamphlet would read….
What is Social Media?
Social Media is the interaction of people on the Web. Unlike traditional media such as newspapers, TV, magazines, Books, Cds, and radios where there is no interaction between others… Social Media is human conversations via Internet Communities.
What are the Symptoms?
The use of, but not limited to, one or more of the following:
Blogging
Instant Messaging
Participating in Forums & Message Boards
Photo Sharing & Video Sharing
Podcasts
Social Networking
Commenting on Blogs
What Causes Social Media Disorder?
The Need for:
More Traffic
Incoming Links
Visability as an Expert in your Field
Moving up in the Search Engines
Interaction between Business Owners and Potential Customers
Branding your Products Name / Business Name
Passing the word around about your product or Service.
How is Social Media Diagnosed?
An Increase in one or more of the following:
Traffic increase illustrated on Website’s Stat Counter (Visitors, Pages, Time Spent)
Your Website being Mentioned Online
Incoming Links / Trackbacks
Increase in RSS Feed Subscribers
Improvement in SERPS
Sales Increased
Comments Increased
Treatment
Once you have caught Social Media it is a Chronic Disorder. There is no way to rid it from your system. Unfortunately, there is no cure for Social Media. Fighting Social Media is extremely painful. The best treatment is to learn as much as you canabout Social Media, so you canaccept it and learn to live with it.
I don’t know about you but I often find myself wanting to do more with social media sites, I want to know when posts on my sites are submitted, what my friends are up to, who’s going hot, who I should be begging to submit my posts because their submissions always go hot. Like many I’m fascinated with social media and the mechanisms behind them.
RSS – Backend of the social web
Most people will be familiar with RSS (really simple syndication) and the concept of feed Readers, sites like Digg, Stumbleupon and Pligg sites like Sphinn all have RSS feeds for their up and coming and Hot posts. Many also offer additional feeds with perhaps Digg going the furthest by even offering an RSS version of search results. RSS provides a simple clutter free version of the site making it much easier to manipulate and combine several feeds providing a single source for you social fix.
Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo provides just the tool for the manipulation of feeds in the form of Yahoo pipes, there are others including tools from Microsoft and a much more advanced Mashup tool by Google. However Pipes is probably the best known and most used. Rather then provide step by step instructions on how to use Pipes I have found a selection of good tutorials to get you started. Remember to view sample pipes, rather then just the results you will need a Yahoo ID and be logged in
If you want to play with any of the example pipes then simply visit the pipes home page, and click the clone button this will create a copy in your account, just remember to hit save when you are finished.
Exporting Pipes
Once you have your pipe sorted you will want to import it to your favourite application, on the published pipes page you will find several ways to get your data, via email, phone or as we will more likely want by RSS.
To get the RSS simply choose the more options, then the RSS option, copy the URL and your there.
Pipes for Socialites
With the basics of Pipes sorted lets jump into a useful pipe. This simple pipe which is a modified and simplified version of one of Engtechs provides a list of submissions on Digg for a given site. With it you will not have to worry if your site is on Digg without your knowledge. RSS|Source Code
As you can see the pipe has just 5 components, though to be fair only two of them are of any note, the source which is the Digg search RSS feed and the Regex, of all the things that people are afraid of Regular expressions has to be high on the list, but in reality they are nothing to be scared of.
This example only works with Digg but to modify it for use with Reddit is not hard or any site which offers RSS version of their search which sadly most Pligg sites do not.
Demo Pipes for socialites
seeing your Digg submit is not the only thing you can do people have been coming up with hundreds of uses:
Keep in touch with friends, submits for example here is a pipe that shows submits on Sphinn by the Collective thoughts team. Do you have a pipe let me know so I can add it to the list.
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
