Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
People like to talk about social media sites in terms the amount of traffic sent by getting on the front page, backlinks, profile backlinks, and passing pagerank.
Image credit: sara.musico
Today, we’re going to have a little fun with it. We’re going to take the web 1.0 metric of time on site and go a little more touchy feely with it for a web 2.0 world. Trust me, this will be fun. Here is a list of my top 5 favorite most addictive sites within social media. Perhaps they aren’t even my favorite, but rather that I can’t seem to get myself off of them 
Plurk
There’s a reason that people are taking a long hard look at Plurk, some of them even migrating or at least spending more time there than on Twitter. Two words: Instant gratification. As if Twitter wasn’t instant gratification enough to type in 140 character points and responses, Twitter has fallen from some people’s obsession list as Plurkers seem heavily engaged, providing rapid threaded responses. It isn’t uncommon to see dozens of responses to a Plurk in 15 minutes - something you’ll never see on Twitter unless your name is Guy or Scoble. What’s worse (best?) is that Plurk’s karma, a key factor in its addictiveness, will actually go down if you’re inactive for a while. Oh, and don’t Plurk too much, the safe Plurking habits guide recommends no more than 30 Plurks per day. Brilliant.
Twitter
Once you’ve found interesting people to follow and have a following, Twitter is an awesome place. Also helpful is to be watching some search tools and have a good client (I’m big on using Twitterfox and Hahlo for the iPhone). It’s great for asking questions, looking for resources on a project, and keeping up with what people are doing.
Breaking news can often be found on Twitter as well. And yes, it has been criticized for its uptime performance - the same people that are hitting the refresh button every 2 minutes while Twitter is down Yeah, it’s that addictive.
StumbleUpon
It’s been around considerably longer than many people think. StumbleUpon is one of my favorite sites due to all the great finds I get through it. SU is a true discovery engine, something that if positioned correctly can give traditional search a true run for its money. StumbleUpon is doing something right, and people are taking notice. I’m a big fan of what they have done with SearchReviews (now in Yahoo as well), putting in your friends stumble ratings right on the SERPS.
Facebook
I know what you’re thinking. Facebook is for kids. It’s annoying. It invades my privacy. Say what you will, but with facebook chat, a few addictive apps, and seeing people on there that mainly stay off other social sites (read: have a life off the computer), Facebook is still a daily mainstay for me. It’s a great way to connect with people that you haven’t seen in years, and you can quickly get lost in time through all the possibilities.
Digg
Image credit: Valleywag
Say what you will. Digg has its issues, but for me, it’s still something I’m checking out throughout the day. While Digg has its challenges and critics, it really is a great place to find a wealth of content (and finally has a new comment system). Yes, a lot of it is just funny/linux/apple, but there really is a lot of good stuff.
There are several others that just missed the list for me: Mixx, Reddit, LinkedIn and FriendFeed, just to name a few. Reason is that I’m finding with the demands of my total addict sites, I’m just not spending time on these other sites every day consistently.
Which social sites are you finding the most addictive?
Posted in social media | 32 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 »
Thursday, December 20th, 2007
Hello everybody who voted in the Open Web Awards hosted by Mashable.
Back in November Mashable presented their Open Web Awards and invited Collective Thoughts to be one of the Judges. The Open Web Awards is the first ever online, open collaborative awards event, to recognize the best online communities representing web 2.0
We would like to anounce the overall “people’s choice” winners.
Mainstream and Large Social Networks = Facebook
Applications and Widgets = Flock
Social News and Social Bookmarking = Digg
Social Search = Mahalo
Sports and Fitness = ESPN
Photo Sharing = Flickr
Video Sharing = YouTube
Start Pages = Netvibes
Places and Events = Meetup
Music = Last.fm
Social Shopping = Woot
Mobile = Twitter
Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks = FilmCrave
Thank you to everyone who participated with us in this event.
Posted in social media | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
…or more importantly, the way most people seem to be going about it, including me at times.
Social Media is currently being touted as the answer to life, the universe, and everything online, but there is a lot more to it than just hitching a ride.
Lets take a look at some of the things you need to think about before you even contemplate a social media marketing strategy.
- 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.
- 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”.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 | 59 Comments »
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
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.
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 | 19 Comments »
