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.
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
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.
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.
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!
We are here today with a distinguished guest that sits outside the realm of social media, but is rather a Political Science professor. (In fact, he was a professor of mine once upon a time). Before all of you think that I have lost my mind, let me explain further. Professor Patrick Regan is an expert in conflict management resolution and game theory, having authored several books including Organizing Societies for War, and the upcoming Sixteen Million One (excerpts found on his site). Thanks for joining us today, Professor.
1 – What do you think about social media in general?
Social media is new and fascinating to me. It is not a medium that I grew up with, so it is a bit harder to get use to, but I can certainly see how this forum for communication can fundamentally change the way people react to public problems. We can see this, for instance, in Tibet today. The Chinese government has overwhelming capabilities to suppress the Free Tibet movement, but the movement has what you refer to as the social media on its side. China quickly tried to shut down as much of this as possible. China is not alone is recognizing the immense power of the social media, as political campaigns today will attest.
One of the downsides – if there really are downsides – to this medium is that conventional forms of communication get marginalized. At first this shows up as loss of profit, of which I am little concerned, but without of viable free and open conventional press we will suffer from the potential abuse by those in power. At least in the short term there needs to be some balance. The unfortunate inclination is for conventional media to respond to the challenge posed by the social media by consolidating and brining less and less variability and initiative into the conventional media. Sounds like doom and gloom, and in the end the more open media will win.
2 – You might not have drawn a parallel of your field of expertise with social media in the past, but I believe there to be striking similarities between social media and game theory, more specifically the prisoner’s dilemma. Cooperation (friending users) is key. What is your take on this?
Game theory provides for us a way to think about choices, how choices are made under certain types of constraints. Your expected payoffs from some action matter a lot, and how you conceive of your expectations and the value of the outcome is a function of information. Game theorists ask questions about how resolved the actors are to press for their preferred outcome, and the like. Cooperation is a bit more difficult if both sides are committed to getting their way, and game theory can show us why. We also know from game theory that the frequency with which we expect to replay the game matters a lot. If it is a one off game, just do what is best for you. But if you’re going to see this person again, then cooperation might be a better strategy. I think this is what you mean by ‘friending users’ – though I bet that word is not in the Webster’s dictionary! The more information we have about those we interact with the more opportunity we have to shape outcomes that are mutually beneficial. Now in principle, if you have a lot of information – at least if it is one-sided information – then there is the opportunity to coerce or exploit as well. A free, open, unregulated social media portends to reduce one-sided information and increase the frequency of interactions over ideas.
3 – There has been a great deal of controversy in the largest social news site, digg.com in which many of the top site contributors were planning a revolt and were getting ready to organize on a live podcast. Toward the end of the podcast, the founders of Digg came on to directly address the crowd and respond to their questions. Typically, Digg has not been very responsive to its users as of late. Do you feel that the Digg founders resolved the conflict in an effective manner?
I am not an expert on Digg.com, though I have read a bit about the revolt. Compromise borne of concessions approaches a necessary condition for a negotiated settlement. Absent concessions, stable outcomes pretty much have to result from a disparity of power, and therefore from coercion. The very first concession in any bargaining environment is the agreement to discuss. By implication if you agree to discuss then you agree that there is some point on which you would give. It might not be enough to settle the dispute, but the recognition is one that implicitly points to the potential for movement. As I gather it the Digg folks did this. Did they come all the way across the table? Not to my knowledge. One way to think of this is that they don’t see it as what we would call an iterative game, but rather each move is a one shot deal. My sense is from reading about this is that the contributors see this as a repeated game. They want compromise and the Digg folks want to coerce behavior.
The protest might be one way to demonstrate that repeated plays are valuable, and maybe the norm. But the protesters also have to realize that successful negotiations most often require concessions from both sides. They can’t expect to be completely coercive any more than they would accept that from Digg. The real key would be demonstrating to Digg that they get a better outcome if they see this as a repeatedly played game or interaction.
4 – More on Digg. The following month, there was a Digg Town Hall event in which the founders had a live webcast where questions could be asked (although they had a list prior to the show, so live participants were not given true voice). Was this an effective method?
It seems that it is effective if both sides play the game. It might not be how I would organize a negotiating session to sort this out, but it sounds to me like some of the contributors bought into it. Better, maybe, to offer to bring an agenda to the table around which discussions or negotiations can take place. By what I understand of this relationship the contributors participate on Digg.com for the personal sense of value (I get my views out there); Digg.com folks do this either for a job or the potential to sell it to a start up venture, that is take it commercial. The contributors would have to demonstrate that Digg.com has no value without the contributors, but also to show that they value Digg.com over the long haul.
Maybe you should all try to get a mediator to sit down with you to work this out. Seems pretty simple on the face of it.
5 – One of the key elements in trying to resolve conflict is the underlying assumption that both sides are rational. Do you think that both sides of the fence are being rational here?
Rationality refers to cost benefit maximization. It could be that the Digg folks are under some sort of constraint to diversity their portfolio of contributors so that they can set this up to be more commercially viable (I’m just guessing). If that is so, then they might be acting rational by compelling diversification. The Contributors might also be seeing their personal viability being challenged by the new constraints on making the headlines. Both can be considered rational in a maximization framework. Is there middle ground? Sure seems like it to me. It almost seems like people aren’t explaining motives and with a clear idea of why each side is being so resolute, concessions might actually be easy.
6 – For those that are not familiar with the prisoner’s dilemma, can you expound on it a bit and how you think it falls within the social media world?
Prisoners dilemma is just a way to think about how choices are made. In the dispute with Digg it is whether to open the process up to the most prolific and interesting or creating diversity. This is a bit like cooperating and defecting in the prisoners dilemma game.
To my mind the idea of a prisoners dilemma is useful for many types of social interactions, the social media might be but one. We use to use it to understand the arms race, the ending of civil wars, and the like. It is really just a way to think about the value of cooperation over defection, and under what conditions can both side rationally conclude that doing the “wrong” thing is right. Everyone knew the nuclear arms race was silly, but both sides went happily down that silly path, and appeared quite rational in doing so. Funny how the world works!
7 – Do you think that social media may one day find its way into your political / game theory teachings? How would you see something like this come about?
I teach a lot about Osama bin Laden this semester and I suspect that much of his communication might fall under what you would describe as the social media. So if his form of communication meets such standards, then the world’s most sought after villain is making great use of social media. But I think I’ll leave you and your readers to figure out whether he is leading, following, or uninvolved with social media.
Thanks for stopping by, Professor Regan – you’ve been a wonderful guest!
It has been a pleasure.
If you would like to see more about Professor Regan, here is an interview he did after doing research for his latest book:
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
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.
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 breedscan 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.
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.
We had a chance to catch up with Icanhascheezburger co-founder, Ben Huh. Here’s what he had to say:
1 - Tell us a little about your background. What drove you to create a site like this, and what do you see for the future? Did you ever think that ICHC would get as big as it did?
We never expected it to be this big — or become a social phenomenon. It’s a wild ride. We see our role as providing tools and a place to be creative. So we’ll continue to build out our site and tools to allow users to do that.
2 - You’re a Wordpress VIP hosting customer. Can you tell us a little about that experience?
We love Wordpress. Period. They are responsive and sharp.
3 - So I guess you’re in the cutsie niche? What other sites do you see you are up against, things like cuteoverload.com?
We have cute pictures, but I’m not sure what niche we belong in. In terms of user attention, we compete with the time waster sites, like online games, entertainment blogs, etc.
4 - I’ve come across ihasahotdog.com. This looks like your latest venture. How’s it going for you so far?
I Has A Hotdog as been another WIN for us. Without much fanfare or publicity, it’s collection quite an audience. We still consider it a beta, but we’ll be publicizing soon. We’ve been really focusing on organic, word-of-mouth growth and it’s working.
5 - You’ve probably had great success with ICHC in social media. What sites would you say you’ve done the best with?
The two that stand out are Digg and StumbleUpon. They are very different animals and their users behave differently. We get a jolt from Digg, but Stumble provides us with longer-term users.
6 - Have you been effected in all of the recent Digg algorithm changes?
It seems to have helped us. On Valentine’s day two of our pictures got front-paged. Which doubles the number of front-page Diggs we’ve had.
7 - What are your favorite LOLcats to date? The guy proposing marriage via LOLcat this Valentine’s Day was a keeper for me.
There are lolcats we can’t [CENSORED] show you. Those are some of our favorites. We’re amazed as to how creative people can get. Of the ones that are published, emowall is one of my favorites. And it doesn’t even have an animal in it.
8 - How much user generated LOLcat material do you get from your fanbase a day?
We get several thousand a day. This is the most exciting and time-consuming part of our job.
9 - On a similar vein, do you ever just get tired of looking at LOLcats?
I thought we’d get tired of it after just a few weeks, but the genre continues to evolve. The creativity of the user-base is amazing. We still laugh out loud every day. At the core of this, it’s not about lolcats, or specific memes. It’s actually about giving users the power to be creative within a flexible framework. I’d like to think that’s what we’re getting good at.
10 - Can you tell us a bit about the upcoming book as well as the poker contest?
The book will show you a new side of lolcats, (read: unpublished) as well as some classics. It’s a fun project for us and you can absolutely expect user-participation in creating the book.
The poker contest is a thank you to our users. Expect a lot more contests in the near future.
When you have completed reading this post you will understand my babbling, but to do so I will tell you a little bit about myself.
Up until recently my favorite flower was a Yellow Rose. Something about a Yellow Rose was always calming. Maybe that was wishful thinking. Again that was until recently. Now I have lost all relevancy to them. We will not go into the reasons today…
As writing this I would have to say that the Dandelion has taken the place of the Yellow Rose as my flower of choice. When I see a Dandelion I immediately go back to my childhood. It has been over twenty years since I have seen a field covered in Dandelions. As a kid growing up on the outskirts of a small town in the Midwest there were not many organized things to do, so most of the kids in the neighborhood collected at a nearby field. The field was often covered in Dandelions. Each night as we were walking home from playing baseball or whatever game we happened to play at the time, the air would be heavy with the distinct aroma of smashed Dandelions. This smell has never left my memory even two decades later.
Now I would like for you to close your eyes for a moment and think of the sound that a Dandelion makes as you pop the head of the flower from its stem and the soft moist texture as you crush it between your fingers. If you have ever pulled one from its stem you know what I am talking about.
About now you should be asking yourself what in the world am I getting at? Why am I decapitating the heads from innocent flowers? If not, you may be the one with some issues. For those of you that did question what am I talking about read on.
The Collective Thoughts blog is about Social Media. Social Media to me is about using interactive elements of a website to get your proposed message across. What better way of getting into someones head then to let them see a little bit into your own mind. It is all about how you build your rapport.
So what is your favorite flower? I would like to know what your favorite flower is and why you would classify it as your favorite. Take this assignment with a small sense of seriousness. Don’t tell me “buds” are your favorite flowers and the reason is that you like to smoke them.
Today’s task is about building a rapport between us. So this is what I would like for you to do on your end. If you are reading this blog I am sure you have already installed the StumbleUpon toolbar on your browser of choice. I would like for you to use that toolbar to create a review of this post and in doing so tell me your favorite flower. In turn, I will write a small review for one of your sites in a future post on this blog.
These days you can see the effects of social media everywhere - even in places you would least expect it.
Take for instance, the case of White Castle. For anyone that lives outside the USA, White Castle is a fast food hamburger chain - you get the idea.
So for Valentine’s Day White Castle is serving up a special menu with candlelit dining and waiter service - reservations required.
Looks like they actually did this in past years as well:
(image credit: Gothamist.com)
You might say - well that’s all fine and good, but how is that social media? Simple. It’s content that is inherently viral. People are talking about it, love it or hate it. Certainly learning and understanding social communities are part of the social media experience, without viral content such as this, we’d all just be Twittering back and forth all day.
Don’t believe this is a viral influence? All these other places thought this was good viral content;
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
p.s Dave Gorman book and DVD is available from 
We are here today with a distinguished guest that sits outside the realm of social media, but is rather a Political Science professor. (In fact, he was a professor of mine once upon a time). Before all of you think that I have lost my mind, let me explain further. Professor Patrick Regan is an expert in conflict management resolution and game theory, having authored several books including 
