Thursday, May 14th, 2009
“I think women put more emphasis, focus and time into their social media browsing than men. Men seem to be very ADHD with social media, jumping from news story to story, whereas I’ve noticed women take slow time and incorporate what they read more into their daily life and lifestyle planning.”
Loren Baker, Search Engine Journal
A great thing about social media marketing is that you literally get a first-rate, hands-on education in human anthropology. You learn what moves people. You learn what people want. You learn how to tug at heartstrings and drive emotions to their limit. You learn how different groups of people respond to different types of content. It’s simultaneously liberating and disillusioning to discover how predictable groups of people behave.
[Note: for the rest of this article, I err on the side of gross generalization. This is necessary to make a general point. There are definitely exceptions to the rules and it's your duty to identify them;-)]
One of the more interesting observations I’ve made over the years as a participant in social media is how differently males and females participate. It is easy to see a strong analogy between the playing field of social media and the playground from elementary school. On the one hand, you have the males who are driven by aggressive competition, accomplishment and the highs of “victory” (football at recess/24 hour digg voting marathon). Sure, there are some females who join in, but for the most part, the aggressive side of social media is dominated by men. Just like how dodgeball games during gym class were usually dominated by the boys. Females, on the other hand, tend towards activities that are cooperative, non-aggressive and friendship building. As I recall, during recess in elementary school, the girls would teach other things like hand-clapping rhymes or sit around in a circle making bracelets (or each others hair). Not all the girls, but most of them. I think the same holds true in social media. Women are looking for like minded people to learn from, to share with, and to build lasting friendships.
Men use social media as a means to some other end. Men want success. Men want traffic. Men want money. Men want to be the best. Men compete to be the best at social media like athletes compete to be the best at their sport. Just like there are superstars in sports, social media sites like Digg and Reddit also have clearly identifiable superstars (and their fanboys).
Now, it would be silly to say that women don’t want things like traffic, money, success, etc. But the point is just that most men are using social media for something other than the social interaction. Women seem to actually use social media as an end in itself: they use it for socializing.
So whereas men use social media to accomplish things and gain status, women seem to use it for “deeper” stuff like building genuine relationships, solidarity and discussions about life (which men might call gossip;-) In my experience, women are much less likely to hit you with a dozen social media vote requests in a single day. I have half a dozen guys bombard me everyday via AIM with non-stop vote requests without even stopping to say hi. Women, in my experience, like to drive real conversation. They actually take the time to read stories and then tell me what they thought rather than just skimming headlines and voting blindly. Women are energized by compliments and pats on the back and affirmation. In other words, women are more social with their social media because in reality, women are more fundamentally social beings.
Women also tend to be more principled in their social media voting. This can be good and bad. The good is that if I send a story to a woman and ask for a thumbs up on StumbleUpon, if she actually likes the story she is more inclined to take the initiative and submit it to other social media sites she is active on (Twitter, Kirsty, etc.) The bad is that women are much, much, much more likely to secretly downvote a request if they don’t like the story (or the person who wrote it). As an example, I’ve stopped sending any “Hot Women” articles to my female social media friends because I have strong empirical evidence that the majority of them end up downvoting. This is not surprising at all and I should have figured it out much earlier given what I know about my wife;-)
Observations
So before getting to a list of some observations and a handful of insightful quotes from my social media friends, let’s draw a conclusion. I believe that the social media professional will be much more successful at his or her craft when taking gender differences seriously. The key, really, is to understand the needs of each person you interact with. Offer them something in return. But don’t assume that everyone wants the same thing. Take the time to understand what motivates each of your social media friends and go above and beyond the call of duty to interact with them so that when it comes time that you need something, they are eager to help. And remember that it’s very easy to wear out a social relationship of any kind (marriage, friendship, business) if one party is not having his or her needs met or if one person is carrying too much of the burden.
Before ending this article I’ve included a few more general observations that come from various social media friends who chose to be anonymous. We’d love for you to add your thoughts in the comments.
- Men often make accounts that look like attractive females for pragmatic purposes (to motivate more action by other social media participants)
- Women tend to use Twitter more for chatting and real conversations
- Men tend to use Twitter more for marketing
- Women are more likely to forward chain emails
- Men are more comfortable with manipulative behavior so long as it helps them acheive their goals
- Women like sites that facilitate discussions about life and offer a peek into others’ lives
- With men, social cooperation comes down to swapping favors
- With women, you have to earn social cooperation through relationship
Quotes from Social Media Users
More men are using it for networking and establishing authority/credibility. More women are using it to share their lives and to connect with other women who share the same values or similar experiences. Women are using it more for solidarity. They’re social beings, and social media has given them the amazing capability to find like-minded women instead of feeling judged and misunderstood by the women in their immediate families/geographic regions.
- Daniel Dessinger
Social media is a lot like relationships in real life – men tend to want information and to give out info if it will help them get ahead or achieve a goal. Women tend to take it a step further and are more willing to connect on a deeper level.
- Charlene Polanosky, Essential Keystrokes
Men seem to promote more, it’s more “about me,” whereas women are natural networkers and seek cooperation and participation. Don’t throw tomatoes at me, I’m just making a generalization in what I’ve obserrved.
- Brian Wallace, NowSourcing
I think women socialize more, but they both use it too boost careers and brands.
- Deb Ng, Freelance Writing Jobs
Women want to be popular or communicate, men want to make money or be considered cool.
- David Peralty, BrandingDavid.com
The biggest difference is that women are actually more naturally atuned to the whole social aspect, and tend to spend more time interacting and consuming the content, whereas men tend to be more fly by visitors and less interactive.
- Elise from Cell Phones .org
I’d say women are more drawn to social services like facebook and twitter, where communication is the feature as opposed to something like digg where there’s a competition like atmosphere.
- JD Arney
I think men want success from their participation on the social media. I think women mostly want to be social and have fun.
- HART, http://twitter.com/PetLvr
Posted in Social Media | 16 Comments »
Friday, August 1st, 2008
Of all the great news and views from this past week, by far our favorite is the announcement of Brendan Picha (from Squareoak) joining the Collective Thoughts team (welcome aboard Brendan)… Beyond that we have funnies, tri-dimensional conversations and hyper-connectivity to keep the head spinning and the belly aching. Also new this week is Tim’s idea that we each pass along some thoughts for the week… we hope they find you well.
Enjoy your weekend!!
Brian’s picks
Thought for the week; It’s always amusing to see the criticism of social media. Funny thing is, it usually comes from people that proudly display a few flashy badges that link to their social accounts. Upon further inspection, the critics are barely using social media.
Tim’s picks
Thought for the week: Social Media is much like my leaky roofer, great when it’s sunny but totally useless in the rain…
Shana’s picks
Thought for the week; Social Media can be very confusing and even intimidating for the Webmaster or Small Business Owner new to Web 2.0. My suggestion would be to start with one Social Networking site/activity and start to know the community. Once you have done that you will be amazed how helpful the Community will be.
Dave’s picks
Thought for the week; I wanted to pass on the words of Chuang Tzu -
The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.
The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.
The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
Brendan’s picks
Thought for the week; It’s really, really easy to get caught-up in routine. Many end-up reading the same blogs, talking with the same people, watching the same news channels. From a creative and educational standpoint it’s very important to make breaking your routine a routine in and of itself. Try making unusual connections like how understanding the dynamics of an ant colony can help you understand social voting or if economic trends augment social behavior online. Inspiration for such thinking can come from reading a book you’d never pick up, watching a documentary you wouldn’t normally watch, or attending a lecture you’d never attend. Routine can have the ability to suck the life right out of you so make sure you get out there and embrace the unknown!
Mark’s Picks
Thought for the week; Expanding your social graph to include peers you would not normally meet in an offline world may offer pleasant results. I have expanded my networking from social connections made online to solidifying offline at various MeetUps and conferences. If you are in the Miami area this weekend I will be attending both Social Media Camp and the Mashable party.
Posted in Collective links | 1 Comment »
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 »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
Image credit – understanding tjsize
This is a guest post by one of our Social Media Ninja winners
Social media is getting too popular – more and more effort is needed to get noticed there and make friends and fans. Beside being loyal, consistent, truthful, etc, etc, there is one proven technique to gain power within social media and your targeted community – that is “be everywhere at the same time.”
Yep, sounds impossible to do, but still can be achieved if you know some tricks. These very tricks are described below (when I was starting, I used them unintentionally without much thinking; so this is a reverse experience – I first did it and then saw that it worked):
1) Start at one network and then gradually spread your efforts to several more.
Most power social networkers tend to actively ’socialize’ at several communities – so go ahead, find them there and befriend. They see you once, they see you twice - they know you already!
To find them:
- check their profiles (people usually link to their other profiles across social media):
– search Google for their names and profile names;
– visit their sites and find what other SM profiles they are linking to.
2) Brand your name and profile image – use one and the same name and avatar for each and every social network you join. Besides, use the same image
for guest posts and blog catalogues/directories. Images are highly associative and easy to remember – being consistent with your choice, you will soon see more and more people recognize you by it.
3) Promote blogs/threads where you actively participate: sphinn/digg/stumble your guest posts or articles where you comment. Thus people will first see your comment, then your (SU) review (or vice versa) – that’s it, they now remember you. When I started participating in SEOMoz community, I occasionally stumbled posts from there – and I was amazed how many people at SU added me to friends and messaged me asking about my SEOMoz activity.
4) Interlink your multiple profiles across social media. Once people get to know you at one network, they are most likely (if you do your homework well) to befriend you across all your common SNs (see #1). Thus you are simultaneously growing your power across several networks.
5) Always comment at posts/discussions where your name/website was mentioned. To do that you will need to subscribe to Google alerts for [your name], [your domain name] and [yourdomainname] to get updated each time you are talked about in the blogosphere. Also if you want to be the first to react to your name mentions, set alerts to update you “as-it-happens”.
All in all, these are 5 basic techniques that will quickly and effectively get people to remember you. With that and by consistently adding quality to the community you will soon see your social media power growing fast and your brand establishing and getting popular.
Ann Smarty is an SEO consultant blogging at SEO Smarty and Search Engine Journal.
Posted in Social Media | 12 Comments »
Friday, April 4th, 2008
This post is inspired by Dave Gorman the UK comedian who is known in the UK for looking for other Dave Gormans amongst others and in America as the stats guy who occasionally appears on the Daily Show. Dave Gorman was recently featured in a TV show where he traveled across America only to make it far more fun he choose to travel without giving any money to “The Man”. “The Man” is the large faceless corporations that seem to be pandemic across the western world from Starbucks to Wal-Mart to IBM “The Man” is everywhere. If you haven’t seen the film or read the book go do so now!
So can you market a site without “The Man”?
Dave was on Radio 2 the other day (yes I am an old fart) promoting his book and he got me thinking with Tad’s ranting on Google doubled with people’s general dislike of corporations is it possible today to market your site without the aid of these large groups.
Well, let’s find out!
Domain names and websites
It’s actual impossible to create and market a website without giving to the man. Since the domain registration system is run by a large corporation and while ICANN the global governing body is a non-profit corporation in the US nearly every national registrar is a faceless corporation. However all is not lost and with a quick tweaking of the rules finding a mom and pop registrar which is reselling a big boy is possible. Hosting its still possible to find small hosting centres just remember to avoid the big boys 1&1, Pipex, etc.
Obviously the site itself can be hosted on good Linux systems and open source software, just remember to avoid Fedora (RedHat) and SUSE (Novell) one thing you might have not thought about your Feedburner, and Google Analytics will have to be put to one side.
Search Engines
Sorry these are all out, at least the big 3 indeed to be truthful to the goal we probably need to block them totally so out with your robots.txt file.
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
User-agent: Yahoo! Slurp
Disallow: /
User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /
Without search engine traffic we will have to rely on other forms of advertising the obvious answer is social media!
No StumbleUpon
Sacrilege I know but life without the man includes life without StumbleUpon which of course is owned by Ebay it also means life with out PayPal again an Ebay company. Interestingly a quick search for ways to stop people sending traffic from StumbleUpon returned virtually no results but fear not we can use HTACCESS to send this unwanted traffic away.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (stumbleupon.com) [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.stumbleupon.com [R,L,NC]
Ok that’s sorted the StumbleUpon traffic it’s now being sent back to StumbleUpon of course thinking with our marketing head we perhaps would want to send it to a page explaining the idea of not getting traffic from “The Man” and with a link for them to find their way back!
Digg
Tricky one this is Digg owned by the man? I think not so it’s safe to market their maybe an article on how to block the evil corporations and “The Man” would go down well just a thought.
Propeller
No chance with it’s Netscape, AOL, Time Warner, Google owners this is clearly the sort of corporation we are looking to avoid so no Propeller traffic once again we will want to redirect users. Normally we would have to come up with some complex strategy to still gain benefits from these links to help our search engine strategy but for once this is not an issue as we blocked them at the start.
Myspace/FaceBook
Sorry News corp but you are the sort of people we want to avoid as for Facebook with a turnover of $15 billion according to Wall Street Journal and with investments from Microsoft and at least 3 major Venture Capital groups looks like your out to.
Looks like the man is pretty widespread but let’s not despair all is not lost we live in the age of web 2 where every kid and his programmer have an idea and the number of start-ups are immense it is still pretty easy to drive some traffic without going to the big corporations.
But why do it?
We are creatures of habit it is worth looking at other sources simply to have a backup strategy it’s also good to support new ideas what is new today may well be the norm tomorrow so it’s better to be in on the ground floor.
But the spirit of independent entrepreneur is being eroded once it was about coming up with a great idea marketing it and amazing people. Now its come up with a concept, get large venture capital company to fund your lunches with Google’s reps.
The next step
First off all I am not advocating giving up traffic sources, or blocking Google on your sites but I am passionate about supporting the little guys who are just like me. So I do plan on setting up a “Man” free site with the whole purpose of finding new traffic methods and ideas.
If you got any ideas or if you think that I was being lenient by claiming Digg was not “The Man” why don’t you let me know below!
p.s Dave Gorman book and DVD is available from his site and Good retailers as is his GoogleWhack stage show DVD (Not suitable for children) if you take nothing from this post go read the books and watch the DVDs!
Posted in Rants, Social Media | 10 Comments »
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
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
Posted in Rants, Social Media | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Photo by Laenulfean
About a week ago I read a ProBlogger post called, "Have Blogs Killed Conventional Websites?". It was a Guest Post by Suzanne Falter-Barns. In this post Suzanne compares conventional websites to blogs as she tries to determine whether conventional websites are a dying breed.
The post brought up a lot of recent anxiety for me. I remember battling with these same thoughts about 18 months ago when I started my first blog. Up until that point all I had were static websites. It didn’t take me long after I started to blog and add in other Social Media activities to realize that I had nothing to fear from Blogs.
My answer to Suzanne’s question about whether Blogs have killed the conventional website is an emphatic, "No." Rather, due to Social Media & blogging, the standard static websites are evolving…. not dying.
I don’t think that Social Media is killing the static Websites at all. In fact, Social Media is giving static Website’s new life.
6 Basic Social Media Activities that can Give a Static Website New Life
- Opens up the Lines of Communication between Customer/Clients & Website Owner. You can do this in many ways. Such as Forums or adding a Blog to your Static Website.
- Let your Customer/Clients know via a Blog about Sales, Promotions, New items, Recalls, etc. Adding a Blog with a RSS feed to your website is a great way to let your customers and readers know about important updates.
- Adding a Blog to your Website can add new content / web pages to your site. This causes more entrances to your Website for Serps and for Viewers.
- Add Social Bookmarking buttons to your static pages and let viewers bookmark them. This can add extra traffic to your website when their social bookmarks are shared with others.
- Using Social Media can let your website compete with other websites/blogs that have larger marketing bank accounts.
- Using Photo sharing for your Product Images can bring traffic in to your website.
The list can keep on going, but my point is still the same. The Static Website is not going anywhere, but the successful ones will add Social Media.
I designed my first static website in 2001 and many, many more followed. It was in 2006 that my anxiety began to get really intense about blogging and other social media. I love security and stability and whatever was happening to the Web at that moment was freaking me out. What is a Blog? What is Social Networking? Why must I change?! But, after that initial temper tantrum I became very determined to not let my Static Websites fall to the waste side. I started researching Blogging & Social Media to see what I could do to adapt my static websites to what the web world was becoming. I wanted to learn what made a blog special compared to a static website…. what made a blog different than what I had already. Why should I feel so threatened by "The Blog".
Through that research and the year or so that followed I realized that the Blog is NOT killing the Conventional Website!! In fact, I feel that
Social Media is causing websites to evolve into so much more. So much more is being offered to the small business website. Blogging keeps the communication open with your customers and potential customers. Other Social Media activities helps get you seen and noticed. Social Media Marketing lets you market your products and services without the extreme cost of other marketing. Also, social media can make sure that your good name isn’t being tarnished. And, if it has been it can be fixed.
Plus, many Static Websites have been around for a very long time. Some search engines consider the website’s age when ranking it in its Search Engine. So, having one of these so called, dying breeds can be a very, very good thing. So, instead of morning its loss celebrate it with adding Social Media to it…. Add a Blog.
Old School Webmasters don’t you dare believe that Blogging & other Social Media is killing the Static Website. Social Media is going to take your Static Website to bigger places… that is if you will let it.
Posted in Social Media | 14 Comments »
Friday, February 1st, 2008
Yes, that’s right. StumbleUpon has just released some fantastic improvements to its review pages. Rather than having the old way of a Helpful? Yes/No next to each reviewer, there is now a much more comprehensive Flag This menu.
Don’t let the Flag this make you think it is only to report spam or offensive behavior.
Personally, I liked the Helpful yes/no since I could see who I marked as helpful or not if I chose too, whereas now I’d need to click on the dropdown for each reviewer.
This is definitely a step in the right direction for StumbleUpon. As for the uses of the new functionality: don’t flag as a spammer just because you don’t enjoy the topic, and don’t flag as violent/hostile/vulgar unless they really are.
Now you’ll have your say. Stumble responsibly.
Posted in Social Media | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
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 can about Social Media, so you can accept it and learn to live with it.
Posted in Social Media | 18 Comments »
Social Media Camp Miami
