Collective Thoughts

Social Media Ninjas - Unite!

Wow, everyone! Thanks so much for your great entries to the Social Media Ninja Contest!

Although we said last time that we would only be advancing the top 10 to the next round, we felt that all 13 that participated should move on.

Edit:  Here are the contest rules:

1 - Please only vote for one candidate.
2 - Votes must be received by Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at midnight GMT.
3 - Candidates cannot vote for themselves.
4 - The decision of the Collective Thoughts team is final.

So here they are, folks. Which of the following should go on to become a Social Media Ninja?

TheGypsy (aka Dave)
Best Known at: Sphinn
Ninja Entry

Posted in social media ninja | 85 Comments »

Become the news source

Tim looks at why becoming a news blogger is hard work and how simple changes to page layouts and designs can attract and promote your news blogs or any site even if he doesn’t use all the tricks himself.

Most bloggers dream of becoming a major source of news and information, millions of visitors and loads of links when you break yet another story. The pace is fast and furious with near daily race to be the first to get the scoop much like traditional media journalism. A vast quantity of front page traffic on Digg and other social sites is from the same websites time and time again but breaking into the exclusive group of true news bloggers is hard work but I hope some of these handy hints will help.

Why do it?

Before we go further you need to stop and take a step back becoming a news blogger is not suitable for all but a minority, go back to those top sites and you will realise nearly all of them are run by a team. With 24 hours in a day a single person can only do so much, and such sites rarely pay for themselves until they reach a certain critical mass. That said the one page tips I’m presenting will help any blogger interested in attracting the social media visitor.

Getting the page ready

How you present your exclusive story will often make or break your site above all you want people to know what the story is as quickly as possible, using stumblers as our basis you have 5.5 seconds to impress or they are gone.

Images

In many ways are the secret weapon of the news blogger and bloggers in general they add something to the story but they are also a useful social media tool.
Primary Image – this is the main image to accompany the article for maximum effect you want to turn this image into a promotional tool, when people photo blog a review on StumbleUpon the chances of a visitor clicking through from the reviews home page is 25% more likely then a standard review. To maximise people using the image as a photo blog picture make sure the image is under 250k and less then 500px width. Include some sort of identifier and don’t be afraid to include words (just make sure you use your alt tags correctly). When it comes to picture nearly all social media users like BBS big bold and simple a slightly risky strategy is to place the primary image just on the fall of the page to force the user to scroll down to see all the image.
Logo Image - A logo image is an image that appears near the top of the post to help categories and give a post a sense of identity, this further helps to cement in the visitors mind what the article is about as well as providing another promotion point. Google news has for a while now been using an algorithm to select suitable images for use within its site for relevant headlines, this sadly may not interest most wannabe news bloggers who don’t make it onto the Google news pages but the use of such images on Digg certainly will. Since the release of the new picture enabled Digg, users when selecting stories have been offered the option of including a picture from the page if and when a suitable image has been found.
The important thing here is getting the scale right Digg currently is resizing images to 160×120 pixels and is only presenting users with the option of JPG so the ideal logo image should be 160×120 JPG, of course you need to make it interesting enough for the submitter to include it and remember to keep it inoffensive to avoid moderation.

Extract/Summary

Many Stumblers and Diggers simply copy the first few lines of an article when reviewing/submitting so make those lines count. Present an interesting and complete first 2 sentences be it a summary or some sort of opening statement. Just remember to keep it short and sweet otherwise the submitter or the site they are submitting you to will cut it off mid flow.

Typography

I am not a designer but subtle use of modern design concepts such as the use of grids really helps a story along. Don’t let a bad design or typography let your story down because it makes the process to hard to read. One technique borrowed from traditional magazine I find extremely useful is pull out and block quotes. While block quotes have a dedicated tag in html pull quotes do not but there are plenty of Javascript pull quote scripts you can use.

Printing

People still like something tangible so along with good typography a clean way to print the article out is essential at minimum a print.css but also think about promoting printing through a print button.

Social media buttons

Adding pretty icons and badges has been all the rage for a while now even the BBC have got social media badges on some of their pages, but there is no real evidence that this “bookmarking” buttons actually increase the number of people bookmarking sites and can have a very negative effect. On the whole social bookmarking do not cause any ill effects with possibly two exceptions
0 Diggs – Nothing says newbie who can’t fix their template then a Digg button with 0 Diggs, it’s a complete turn off. Social media users tend to flock or hunt in packs a button with a low score can put people off, If you are going to use Digg buttons then only place them on your post at the 20+ mark and make sure you remove them after a few days or immediately after your article is buried no point wasting your users time which could be spent viewing more of your content. You will of course point to the bottom of this page and scream hypocrite what else can I say but bah!
Stumble Me buttons - When StumbleUpon produced a series of buttons people raced of to use them on their blogs without thinking through the consequences. Call it a bug or a protection feature if you like, but Stumble Me buttons are worthless. Every time a user uses your stumble me button to leave a review you lose a potential thumbs up. This is because when you leave a review it does not also thumb up the page as well, so while you might get a couple of hits from peoples home pages on StumbleUpon you will not receive any additional toolbar traffic.

General tips for news blogging

Apart from on page issues some simple things make a large difference in News Blogging

• Work in a team
• Be quick but accurate
• Moderate your comments
• Let others promote you, concentrate on getting the stories
• Don’t be afraid of scrapers always include good full internal links
• Be consistent unlike other forms of blogging news bloggers need to post regularly

Posted in Tips & Tricks, productivity, social media | 7 Comments »

Wow, Social Media is a lot like High School!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Social Media. Love, Love, Love, Obsessed, Love Social Media. I’ve been very serious about Social Media and the amount of time I’ve spent doing it daily for the past 6+ months. It didn’t take me long to realize that Social Media has a lot of similarities to High School.

Popular Crowds

Every High School has their popular crowds and Social Media is no exception. Getting into the Popular Crowd can be tough, but we all have heard of the Perks of once we get accepted into it.

Clubs

We all remember Drama Club, Ski Club, Chess Club, Math Club, Wrestling Club, blah, blah, blah. Social Media has Clubs too…. Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, StumbleUpon. Some clubs are more popular than others. We might like all of them, but we don’t have the time to participate in all of them. So, we pick our favorite Clubs and participate in those Clubs the most.

The Bad Boys

Oh boy, did my School have some Bad Boys!! I’m positive all High Schools do. These were the guys who were rebels. They would push the limits. I was always fascinated with the bad boys. Sure, they made me nervous, but there was something about them that made me want to get to know them better. Social Media has the Bad Boys as well. These are bloggers that write whatever is on their mind at the time. They are not out to hurt anybody, but you can feel their emotions in every single one of their controversial posts.

Rule Breakers and Goodie-Goodies

I wish I could say that when I was in High School I was popular, but I can’t…. I was a total Goodie-Goodie. Mostly out of fear of my mother, but whatever. I was a total Nerd!! The Rule Breakers were those kids who, well, broke the rules. They smoked in the bathroom, they were always in detention, and most often they were skipping classes. Well, in Social Media we have the Rule Breakers and Goodie-Goodies too. But, in Social Media we call them Black Hats and White Hats. Social Media wouldn’t be the same without them.

Parties

High School Parties…. the closest I was ever to one was seeing them in movies. I told you…. I was a total Nerd. But, I heard High School Parties rule!! Ok, I went to High School in the 80’s. Do they still say, "Rule"? In Social Media there are Conferences. There is a Major Party going on right now, PubCon, and I’m totally missing it. Can’t blame this one on my mother, but I am totally going to get to one of these Parties, Mom!!

Peer Pressure

I don’t think I have to explain to any of you that there is a ton of Peer Pressure that teens face in High School. We have all been there. I vividly remember the amount of pressure that I was faced while I attended High School and for that reason, among others, I don’t think I would ever want to go back to High School again. Social Media has there own Peer Pressure as well. The pressure surrounding the Social Media community is a bit different, but the pressure feels the same. The Emails, Instant Messages and Shouts to Vote-up, Thumbs-up, and Submit posts are insane.

It can be intense. I’ve reached my 200 friends limit on StumbleUpon and I started to clean house. You couldn’t imagine the emails I received asking why I am no longer a friend with whoever? Are you kidding me? I only got rid of people that hadn’t produced activity in a long time or that I no longer had anything in common with. UGH!! Peer friggin Pressure!!

Gossip

Ahhh, High School Gossip… The who’s dating who, who skipped school to meet their boyfriend, who cheated on who!! Standard Gossip from all High Schools. Well, Social Media has their own gossip….. Facebook, baby!! Gotta love it!! In one day’s time on Facebook I can find out who body slammed who, who got dry humped, where someone is right now and what they are doing, and who drunk dialed who. I can get my fill of gossip and not even feel guilty for it. Well, maybe a little…. after all, I probably could be doing something much more productive. But, it’s called social networking for a reason, right?

Just as with High School we are all trying to find our spot that we fit into with Social Media. It’s a ton of fun, a bit stressful at times, the pressure can be intense, but I wouldn’t change it for the World.

Posted in social media | 17 Comments »

Social Media Marketing is Similar to a Fishing Tournament

Today I would like to address the similarities of how social media marketing is like a fishing tournament with an emphasis on the social voting sites. Many of you already know that I am somewhat of a fishing fanatic. Everything I do has some relation to catching the fish of my dreams!

First let’s look at who the players are and what they compared to, starting with the main prize winner. If you want fame and fortune in the fishing world you want to land the monster Blue Marlin. The winner of a Blue Marlin tournament will often bring TV and newspaper coverage; if you’re lucky enough to catch that tournament winner you will also qualify for many endorsements with offshore fishing equipment companies.

If you’re looking for the same effect online, what site do you want linking to you that compares to winning a Blue Marlin tournament? Digg! Getting an article on the home page of Digg can make your server scream just like the drag screams when line peels off your reel from an acrobatic Blue Marlin racing off toward the horizon. Everyday I see sites go down from the “Digg Effect.”

They’re many fish in the ocean that I can compare to social media related sites; of which we have the major offshore pelagic species. The “pelagic” species live in midwater or close to the surface and commonly the top of their food chain. They include swordfish, tuna, dolphin wahoo, swordfish and many others. These compare to the larger social media sites that are all the rage recently. These social media sites include Digg, Propeller, StumbleUpon and Mixx just to name a few.

Breaking down the list of species and what sites they compare to, starting with Digg. I like to compare Digg to Blue Marlin. Blue Marlin are often very elusive to reach, but worth the effort to seek out. One Digg home page post may bring ten’s of thousands of visitors to your site, but the main prize is the all important backlinks created when other bloggers review your post.

Next up is the newly updated Propeller.com. Until recently you could find them on the Netscape.com domain. They have been renamed their social news voting site to Propeller and are steadily creating a quality traffic stream. Propeller is the Sailfish of the internet. Sailfish are a highly prized fish that produce spectacular runs, just like Propeller can produce spikes in traffic which make them a popular social media site to marketers.

StumbleUpon is the Dolphin that are everywhere offshore. Dolphin, also known as Mahi Mahi, are favored by the weekend warriors because they can catch them with limited fishing experience. Dolphin grow fast but have a limited lifespan so they do not reach the size of Marlin or Sailfish. StumbleUpon creates sustained traffic for up to a week from just one good Stumble. Although this traffic is not as heavy as Digg StumbleUpon traffic is easier to achieve.

New to the scene is Mixx. Mixx is the Snapper of the internet. Mixx is a new social voting site that looks like it will grow into a valuable community with lots of potential. With a little research users can obtain some nice backlinks and targeted traffic. Snapper are one of my favorite species to fish for in a tournament. They can vary in size from small Mangrove Snapper to the very large Cubera snapper that can reach over 100 pounds. If you are looking for a site to market a variety of niches, Mixx is the one to use.

Once you see the similarities of how social media marketing is like a fishing tournament you can start looking at how to approach them to gain the most benefit. For the newbie to social media marketing I recommend you begin with the smaller social media sites. Once you are familiar with how they work you will progress up to StumbleUpon and then finally on to Digg.

Posted in social media | 14 Comments »

What A Mixx Up: Interview With Mixx Founder Chris McGill

With me today is Chris McGill, founder of the latest and greatest social news site, mixx.com. Mixx, only a 7 week old community that’s still in beta, has really taken off as of late, and has been featured in TechCrunch and other prominent blogs.

1 - You’ve got an impressive looking background. Can you tell us a little about your experience with Yahoo and USA Today, and perhaps how these experiences prepared you for the foray into making a social news site?

My experiences at Yahoo and at USA Today were pretty different. Yahoo, back in the day under Mallet and TK and the crew, was pretty much the Wild West. We were told to do what we thought was right. And there were literally dogs and an assortment of other critters running in the hallways. I’m proud of what we did with Yahoo News. We took a different approach—rather than producing news we simply empowered the user to customize what they wanted to look at, ignore what they didn’t, take action, share, see what was the most popular and go to the source if we didn’t have the content on Yahoo itself. Mixx is just a natural extension of that.

Working in a traditional press corporation like USA Today is very different. There is a certain way of doing things and while there are many people vigorously trying to adapt, long-standing culture and infrastructure (like big expensive iron presses) make it difficult to change rapidly. My time at USA Today gave me a huge appreciation for what the traditional press does for all of us. I’ve met reporters who literally walk into battle zones and risk their lives (usually getting paid very little to do so) to bring back information vital for all of us to make political, financial and moral decisions.

Taken together, my experiences with Yahoo News and USA Today gave me some understanding of what people want out of information and how they use it.

At Mixx, our mission is to bring together users and publishers (whether that’s a Mommy Blogger or big media) who are interested in the same topics. If we succeed, then everyone wins.

2 - What made you decide to start a social news site in the first place? Mixx doesn’t really seem like a niche site, so it appears to be direct competition with the major players (Digg, Reddit, Propeller, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, Del.icio.us)? I suppose though that Mixx’s personalization aspect makes it a different experience – is this the plan?

First, I like all those other sites and they certainly served as inspiration. But I wanted to take what these other sites do well and then be able to focus it on the things that I’m interested in. For example, sure, I want to know what people in general are interested in (text, photos, videos), but I also want to know what people in Bethesda, MD, are telling me I should look at, what Red Sox fans are raving or complaining about, and what people who are tracking research on Alzheimer’s (a family legacy I would prefer to avoid) are telling me is important. I wasn’t able to do that with any of the existing sites.

On Mixx, I’ve set up a private group for my co-workers, as well as one for the parents of my daughter’s pre-school classmates. I’m guessing that those groups wouldn’t be of much interest to many other people. Look, the reality is that we all have different interests; a one-size-fits-all recommendation board isn’t going to be very helpful to a diverse group of people. So a mom in Des Moines who comes to Mixx to find information relevant to her life and interests is just as welcome as our community of hard-core techies who use tags to drill down into tech topics. And it’s important to note that anyone who comes to Mixx can create topics of interest if they do not already exist, by using tags.

There are four ideas that drive us:
1) Personalization: We take as our example the likes of MyYahoo, Pageflakes and Netvibes.
2) Democratization: Obviously Digg and Reddit blazed the trail here.
3) Personal contact only when the user wants it: LinkedIn and Facebook were our standards.
4) Marvin Gaye: Because in Marvin’s words, “We’re all sensitive people with so much to give.”

3 – If I may, would love to share some ideas for improvement with you.

a. Many successful social sites have useful browser plugins to increase your ability to interact with the community, even when you aren’t directly on the site. Any plans for a toolbar release?

We absolutely have plans to do a toolbar. Giving our members a constant touch-point to Mixx is a great community builder—not to mention just good business.

b. Any plans for an open API? I’m sure that more developers could take the community to the next level.

Ah, someone’s been sneaking a look at our roadmap! APIs are one of the projects we’re working on right now. Our initial plan is to use them to build a Facebook application, but by opening up, we’re certainly hopeful that the community will step in and create cool applications that we never envisioned.

c. If I friend a user, they get an email that says that
<user> thinks you are a really cool person who knows your way around the web.

If they friend me back, I get a message saying:
<user> thinks you are a really cool person who knows your way around the web.

With the current growth rate of Mixx, I would find it easier to keep track if a friend back message said
<user> has returned the favor and friended you back.

This is a great suggestion, and probably something we should have been doing from the start. We’ve been working on our email communications, so we can definitely add in this idea.

d. How about giving users the ability to private message each other?

This is also on our roadmap. Allowing direct communications between users is a wonderful community-builder and something we want to move on as soon as we can. Unfortunately (or maybe it’s a good thing), we have a very long roadmap, and we’ve had such great feedback from the community that we want to give priority to some of their most-requested items.

e. How about making a Mixx button similar to Digg, Reddit and Sphinn that shows the number of votes an item has received?

A gallery of Mixx buttons is on the way. We hope to have some available on the site within a couple of weeks. But our first priority is to complete the APIs that we talked about earlier.

4 – What’s your whole take on Greg (aka cGt2099) getting banned from Digg episode? Looks like quite a number of Diggers have come over to Mixx since this episode.

Let me start off by saying that we have a lot of respect for what Digg has created. They’ve provided their users with an amazing set of tools to recommend content to each other. They also have a very strong community, and they have obviously been very successful and a key part of the Web 2.0 movement.

As far as Greg getting banned…I have no idea what happened. All I know is that Greg is a fabulous and active member of the Mixx community and we are very happy to have him.

5 – There are some good looking signs that Mixx is on the move. Some users have created the mixxingbowl, a forum site for Mixx, and stats show Mixx increasing fast. How many users are in the system now, and do you think that this rate of growth can compete with other social news sites?

The things we are seeing in the community just blow us away. Seriously, it is just incredibly heartening. People we had never talked to went out and set up a site called mixxingbowl.com to discuss what they like and what they don’t like about Mixx, as well as ways they can help us. I have been in the digital information business for nearly a decade—never seen anything like it. I think it does two things: 1) It shows that what we’re trying to do has struck a cord out there and people really appreciate it and, 2) it makes us want to run to work every morning to try to execute for these people. It is crazy fun, really. Emphasis on both the crazy and the fun.

As for our growth, we are seeing some encouraging trends. Visits and page views continue to rise on a day-over-day basis. Time spent on the site is increasing. We’re seeing a lot more voting and commenting. The photos section is really taking off. I could go on (and on and on!), but we know that we have a long way to go, and want to keep working with our users to build a friendly, vibrant community where people come to find content in their areas of interest.

6 – Do you see Mixx as an acquisition target? Something like Reddit or Newsvine?

I know some people will find it hard to believe, but we don’t even think about that right now. Maybe someday, but right now what we think about it how to make the product better and what the community is telling us they want.

7 – Are you pleased with the usage and turnout on Mixx so far? What are your goals?

We’re thrilled with the turnout—who wouldn’t be? We’re still really little because we’ve only been out for seven weeks, but as we continue to grow, we’re going to keep working to maintain the small community feel—we think the way we’re structured will allow us to do that. Our goal is to have a happy, engaged community that people will want to make a part of their daily routine.

8 - Why did you decide not to have any category of online marketing stuff, they have Apple but no Microsoft = back to the old Digg setup.

For a while we had Science and Tech in the same bucket and were limited by space as to how many sub-categories, or topics, we offered there. When we split those categories in two, we were able to create specific topics that people had been asking for—like Linux and Design. One of our next upgrades will include a few more topics that folks have been requesting—Microsoft and Software are two that come to mind.

The thing to remember is that categories are just plain old stock… users can set up tags to create ANY category they want.

9 – Does Mixx discourage or encourage submitting your own content? Communities such as Digg are not very big on having users submit their own content. Whereas many niche communities such as Sphinn actively encourage self-submissions of quality content by an author.

The only content we don’t encourage is submitting content that violates our Terms of Use. Our community will determine whether the content is worth recommending to others by voting up.

10 - Will there be a way to distinguish between friends, followers and mutual friends? I look at my page of followers and don’t know who I have friended back.

Great suggestions keep coming. We absolutely should do this, and will be part of what we’re doing as a general theme to encourage more community features to the site.

Thanks so much for your time, Chris! You’re really well on your way to building a great community. I’m glad you and your team are receptive to the feedback within your users.

Thanks for having me Brian!

Posted in Interviews | 25 Comments »

10 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Sucks…

…or more importantly, the way most people seem to be going about it, including me at times.

Lets take a look at some of the things you need to think about before you even contemplate a social media marketing strategy.

1. Undefined Goals vs Specific Goals

   I would regard the following as fairly undefined goals:-

   • I want more customers for my business
   • I want to launch this new product with a boom!
   • I want more people to read my blog
   • I need more links to rank higher

   With social media marketing, whilst many items are difficult to determine, if you start out without specific goals, you may well be wasting resources.

   Here are some ideas for more specific goals:-

   • My business is mainly local, thus I need to target regional specific venues, or vertical venues that might broaden my reach locally.
   • My product has a niche focus thus I will target venues frequented by media within my niche aimed at bringing in 20 media mentions in the first wave of my viral marketing campaign.
   • I want Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Robert Scoble to subscribe to my blog - obviously I need to target people in my niche - specific linkerati and influencers.

Aim for targets within your reach, thus if you don’t have a strong enough hook, don’t try to land a big fish.

2. Random Activity vs Planned Method of Attack

Whilst it is possible to become a bridge between online social circles and to target multiple niches simultaneously, it is certainly a lot more time consuming to do successfully.

Defining a single core audience and becoming a thought leader in that single marketplace is ultimately a better long-term strategy than trying to become “all things to all men”.

3. Random Stats vs Accountable Statistical Measures

This one is a hard one to pin down - lots of aspects of social media are extremely difficult to track accurately, especially things like RSS Subscriptions or votes on social voting buttons.

Try monitoring things like open rate in your feed stats, compared to number of comments and the number of links your receive on your blog. Surprisingly they do not always correlate.

One of my most read posts in my RSS Feed on Andybeard.eu has but 2 comments - it is actually quite recent. Conversely my discussions relating to Google’s PageRank updates in October are poor performers in my RSS stats, but bring in a lot of links and traffic.

4. Random Content vs Planned Content Strategy

Plan your content strategy around your previously defined goals, not what is happening in the blogosphere. Look on discussions and events happening outside of your niches as opportunities if they are related to your goals, or can be leveraged.

5. Random Encounters vs Optimized Role Management

This is more on the corporate front. When you enter social media marketing channels, there will be a need for 2-way conversation - with customers and clients, members of the press and bloggers, raving fans and detractors in the public eye.
A decision needs to be made on how you will react to different instances, preferably in advance with multiple options and a “plan B”. People do go on holiday, and things will not always go as you plan.

6. Random Pathways vs Defined Traffic Funnel

Again an enigma - traffic will be coming in from multiple sources and often they will have different preferences in how they can be treated whilst visiting your website.
If you have ever done PPC advertising with multiple landing pages, think of how that can be applied to Social Media Marketing by offering a different landing page to traffic from different sources.

7. Traffic vs Targeted Traffic

Ultimately you are looking for people visiting your site who have some value, though that doesn’t necessarily mean direct financial value. A popular stumbler or digg user who likes your content but would not be looking to buy from you would be a good example, or possibly potential link partners in a similar niche.
Even people visiting your site who ultimately just click away on some advertising are valuable, not just with PayPerClick advertising but things like site sponsorships. Bringing value to your site sponsors is also important in brand recognition and traffic.

8. Topical Linking vs Strategic Linking
   • Link to a regular reader in your niche who doesn’t get much traffic
   • Link to someone in your niche who has never read your blog
   • Promote someone’s niche ranking list to get included
   • Included someone in your niche ranking list to get traffic
   • Link to like minded dofollow blogs because you get a link from their trackbacks

Think out of the box with your linking

Use tools such as Technorati, Google Blogsearch, Techmeme & Megite to your advantage - use them strategically.

9. Reporter vs News Epicentre

If there is a large conversation about a topic related to your niche, do you want to be a spoke on the wheel or the hub of conversation?
Whilst it might not initially be possible to become a source for explosive stories, it is possible to become an acknowledge filter of the conversation.
Services such as Techmeme and Megite allow you to identify hubs of conversation, and also to identify other bloggers who are also hubs of the conversation. Hubs of conversation are more likely to write followup articles on the same subject, and in general are link friendly, thus if you offer insight along with links to other sources of information, the chances of being brought into the conversation increase.
Techmeme is itself a hub, but has the disadvantage of not offering commentary, and does get criticism for not covering niche bloggers as well as a human.

10. Self Orientated vs Customer Orientated

Social media is just that… social - if your motive for getting involved is purely for personal gain, you are wasting your time.
Social media site users are smart, and opinionated. If they feel they are being manipulated or gamed, they are going to call you out on it, and there can be negative ramifications.
The best way to demonstrate to future subscribers and hopefully customers why they should be reading your content, or doing business with you is to interact with them.
In some lines of work you must be prepared to “move the free line” thus you will be giving far more of yourself than you might initially receive in return.

I will be addressing each of these topics in much greater detail in future posts, but I would love to ask you which aspect of your social media marketing strategy you find most difficult to pin down?

Posted in social media | 63 Comments »

Stop Steampunk SEO, Start Being Friendly to Your Peers

Steampunk laptop by Datamancer.net

Some people are hopelessly late. Are you one of them? Many people still think that

• search engine submission
• meta tag optimization
• keyword stuffing
• PageRank
• link exchange

and similar SEO anachronisms straight out of the nineteenth century will get them website traffic and make it an authority. Wake up, you have been asleep for more than a century. Stop practicing steampunk SEO tactics and start dealing with the future or rather the current web, web 2.0

In web 2.0 we also speak of the social web. The social web is not a web of spiders anymore, it’s a web of humans. Yes, people like you and me. Webmasters, bloggers, social media users, readers, people who seemingly do not contribute anything but click.

Something radically changed. And you were asleep. You didn’t notice it while you were exchanging links in your footer, watching your pagerank bar and adding three different synonyms of the same word into your page title.

Maybe you have been on Digg, Flickr or YouTube already and you read some blogs like Boing Boing.
If you want to succeed in todays web memorize some more of these names:

• WordPress, Drupal
• MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog
• StumbleUpon, Yoono
• BlogRush, CLIQ
• Mixx, BloggingZoom
• Facebook, LinkedIn
• Twitter, Pownce

Just to name some of my favorites and some sites you just can’t ignore anymore…

But it’s not just about the sites, the brands, the latest hypes.

It’s about you. But it’s not only about you. It’s also about your peers, about your neighbours, your friends or even your competitors!

While you depended on the new deity, Google, the world has moved on.

While you removed links to other sites so that you do not loose PageRank others have been linking generously. While you did not sleep at night watching your PageRank bar in anxiety others uninstalled the Google toolbar. While you were determining the ideal keyword density others were socializing with their peers. They were creating relationships, building up power profiles, connecting with their colleagues around the globe.

They rank in Google above you, as a side effect, some of them do not even have PageRank but they not only outrank you but their traffic is ten or hundred times bigger than yours. They even link their own competition as you call it. Either you do it too or you’ll be forgotten and marginalized. Start now. Read on. It’s not too late yet. Be friendly to your peers. You depend on them.

Posted in social media | 30 Comments »

Webmaster, stop being so AntiSocial!!

When I became a Webmaster in 2001 the Web was so different than it is today. Becoming successful was much easier. I started making money fairly quickly. My rules were pretty simple as a Webmaster back then.

• Create a beautiful site,
• keep up with SEO and tweak my site often,
• create fresh content.

But, what wasn’t included in my rules for success back then was personal relationship. And, for me, that is what I found was the biggest change between the original World Wide Web and Web 2.0. Yes, the above is still true. Having a beautiful website that is constantly being optimized and fresh content added often is still extremely important, but it is not enough anymore. Personal Interaction with readers and other Webmasters and Bloggers in your Business Niche is a must.

Times have changed. If I had continued down that Anti-Social path I would have lost everything I had worked so hard to create. With the evolution of the World Wide Web into Web 2.0 came Social Media. Social Media is the way we converse with others over the internet. And, all Webmasters should be adding Social Media to their Business Plan immediately.

Here are some of the ways a Webmaster who is stuck in Web 1.0 can start using Social Media.

• Blogging
• Social Networking - (StumbleUpon, FaceBook, Twitter)
• Social Bookmarking - (del.icio.us, Diigo, blinklist)
• Message Boards and Forums - (Cre8asite)
• Answer Services - (Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com)
• Video Sharing - (YouTube, Jumpcut)
• Photo Sharing - (Flickr, PhotoBucket)
• Commenting (on other blogs and responding to comments on your blog)

Social Media brings back human Relationship to a standard Website. In order to be successful you need to add personal relationship to your business equation. Without adding Social Media I promise you that you will not see the true ability of your site.

Ruud Hein wrote an amazing post, “It’s
the participation economy, stupid!” In his post he points out that attention requires participation. Hein writes,

“If you’re not participating, you willingly give up mindshare and fail to influence.”

There is no room for Anti-Social on the Web today. So, if you are not a “people person” then you need to look inside yourself and figure out if this truly is what you want to do. If it is, move past it. The fact of the matter is that anyone can have a Website or be a Blogger. But, not every Webmaster or Blogger can be a Success.

There is only one Equation for success on the Web today. And, that equation includes Social Media. If you want Online Success there is no room for AntiSocial!!

Posted in social media | 21 Comments »

7 Ways to Own Social Media Before it Owns You

Last night, before sitting down to power through some serious social media activity, it really hit me.

I told myself that I need to blog something because my Alexa rank was slipping.

Alexa Rank?? What??? Am I insane???

When I started looking at my latest blogging performance, I noticed that my posts have been much shorter lately on social media. Much less than when I would primarily write about blogging tips and starting a blog.

Then, I started to look at some of my daily social media activities:

• Reading RSS feeds of my favorite blogs (I hate RSS, even full feed - but they are a necessary evil. Still, I try to actually read blogs that I like)
• Finding interesting content
• Submitting interesting content
• Checking stats
• Friending people on MyBlogLog
• Responding to my own comments
• IM conversations with people all over the globe (read: no sleep if I wanted to talk to all of them all the time)
• Write a few posts (some start to finish, some partial thoughts) and coming up with post ideas
• Prepare for blog interviews
• Submit stories to several social networks
• Save bookmarks on del.icio.us
• Stumble some sites
• Sphinn some stories
• Comment on other blogs
• Perpetuate poke, superpoke, vampire, and slayer wars on Facebook
• Ask others for Sphinn votes. (No, scratch that)
• Twittering, since everyone wants to know up to the minute details about my cat? Newsflash: I don’t have a cat.

Wow, all these activities are really fragmenting. Not super time consuming, as you can multitask, but fragmenting. Like 20 tabs up in Firefox and other apps all over the place fragmenting.

Can we really multitask as well as we think? Kathy Sierra, one of my favorite bloggers ever, would argue that we cannot multitask effectively. (By the way Kathy, if you read this - please, please return to blogging. The world needs you).

So, does this mean that I’m out of the social media space? No way! In fact, expect to see much more from me social media wise very soon

What’s the plan then, you ask? Easy. Instead of suffering from social media overload, look at a few other disciplines and tips for help:

1 - Focus. Getting hit from different IM’s, especially from offline ones when first signing in can really send you off in different directions. Actually turn off IM once in a while. I’ve tried this off and on over the last week or so, and some people were actually concerned

2 - Sleep. Whenever I get tired, but always wake up at the same time (for me, this is 6am). I first saw this on Evan Williams’ blog but it’s originally from Steve Pavlina

3 - Balance. Whether you have a physical / sports, religious / spiritual, art, or whatever outlet - use it. I’m personally a very religious person, and am glad that I am.

4 - Stop talking about social media to people that don’t care about it. Try not to talk everyone’s ear off about social media that isn’t in the space. My apologies to all family and friends that still don’t know what I do, but see that I’m clearly excited about it You know that guy that walks around with the hands free that looks like he’s talking to himself? Annoying, right? Don’t be him.

5 - Family time. Whether you’re an 18 year old social media pro or someone with a wife and kids, your family likes you. Walk away from the computer for a few minutes. You might notice that your kids have grown since you last looked at them

6 - Cross pollinate your brain. Find something opposite of social media to do for a while to let the social media parts of your brain recharge. You’re an SEO? Go do SEO (non-social media) work for your clients. You’re a zookeeper? Well, feed those seals already. They can’t live on Diggs alone! Learn some new skills or enhance ones that you already have.

7 - Unplug. Do something that’s not in front of the computer (since you’ll be tempted to Stumble it if it is something good). Read a book, watch a movie, do some knitting, cook, eat, play a game, jump out of a plane - whatever. A friend of mine even went so far as to go into an underwater cage where folks from above throw food down so that Great White Sharks try to get into your cage. He says it’s a rush, but I think I’ll read a book.

It’s fine to engage in social media snacking. Just don’t lose sight that life is the main course.

Posted in productivity | 47 Comments »