Posts from — December 2007

My buddy, Bob Ewing, over at Shakyard, has created his very own social networking site designed specifically for the natural gardener.

Bob used a service called Ning to create his social networking site and while their are many online services that allow you to create your own customized networking site, Ning prides themselves in being the only service that allows you to accomplish this for free.

It’s a great concept and while sites like MySpace and Facebook, often times, are too public for their own good, Ning offers users the chance to create a private social media portal…….

“As with walk-up-and-publish tools like Blogger, TypePad and pbwiki,
Ning enables anyone to create a privately branded social network into
which one can invite others to publish content such as weblog entries,
videos, photos, forum discussions and live chats.”

I would have to agree with the bloggers at Content Blogger, in that content technology platforms for social media, like this, are just beginning to touch the surface in a world of a networks that don’t offer the advantages of control and interest that Ning does. It will be interesting to see what develops and who develops what in 2008.

Tanya Ferrell, an SEO intern, has spent a lot of time researching social media this past year. In honor of her research, the Kolbrener blog invited her to write a post about her findings.

Here’s what Tanya found:

“A social media marketer has two options in life. They can be a power
account or they can pitch to power accounts. The biggest difference
between the two is a matter of time. Pitching to power accounts can
be fast and easy. Becoming a power account takes time, especially at a
large site like Digg.”

Tanya goes on to say that in order to hit it big time in the realm of social media, it’s not always a good idea to target the powerhouse sites. Tanya gives a very comprehensive list of 50 smaller, niche, news sites that can allow you to become a power account in a smaller community.

Here are a few from her list:

“Plime - Plime is a pliable tree of interesting links, cultivated and pruned by everyone.
Newsvine - Updated
continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of
what the world is talking about at any given moment.
ShowHype - ShowHype finds the top stories in entertainment for you to vote on and discuss.
Hugg - Seen some green? Hugg is your source for user-submitted green news.
Real Estate Voices - A
real estate social news site designed to help you discover the most
interesting articles of the day, as voted and suggested by your fellow
users.”

I have used several of these sites in the past and while they did not bring the desired traffic that a site like Digg and Stumble Upon can, I did not dedicate myself to making the most of them by building myself to a power account level.

Tanya’s list is definitely worth taking a look at and you can decide for yourself what sites would work best for you and your content.

Facebook is one of the most utilized social media sites in the nation and lately they have been under fire for their use and presentation of their new Beacon application. While I am normally a person quick to forgive, I am even more impressed when people can admit their mistakes and limitations in the world of Web 2.0.

My buddy Paul, over at Hee Haw Marketing, has a full post featuring Mark Zuckerberg and his response to the Beacon disaster from his Facebook blog…….

“About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to
help people share information with their friends about things they do
on the web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but
we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad
job with this release, and I apologize for it.” Read the whole speech here.

You gotta love a guy that is making oodles of money from Facebook and in reality, could totally care less about his users if he were like some people, and yet, he takes an active role in realizing his user’s feedback and makes the necessary changes to keep them happy. Mark has shown that by making community count you build brand loyalty and that makes him successful in the social media realm by any standard.

I recently joined Twitter. I am intrigued and would like to really utilize this form of social media but I am a bit intimidated by it. Maybe I just don’t think anyone would be interested in what I’m doing, which essentially, is what Twitter is all about.

Twitter seems to be somewhat of an extended version of Facebook, in that you can do all kinds of elaborate things. They even have a blog. Adam Lisagor, from the kottke blog, appreciates Twitter because it fulfills a primal urge, in him, to be a kid again acting out in class……..

“In Twitter, there is a sense of ordered play. There is no judgment.
You can talk to your neighbors, stand up and give a report on what
you’re doing, pass notes, make fart noises if that’s your schtick (the
highest form of comedy), or sit in the back, observing.”

From a social media standpoint, Twitter is a great way to get new ideas and increase your vocabulary, while at the same time experiencing the joy of “peer approval”. Peer approval for the longest mouthfart? Now, that’s right up my alley.

In this day and age, social media has become a very valuable tool for many people and looks to continue to be popular on into 2008. But what is social media exactly? Wikipedia describes social media as…..

“Participatory online media where news, photos, videos, and podcasts are
made public via social media websites through submission. Normally
accompanied with a voting process to make media items become popular”

In other words, it’s an on-line conversation that is for the purpose of promoting someone or something.
Whether you’re a mom, a business man or an e-commerce owner, promoting videos, images or websites, there are thousands of social media sites that can help you get the exposure you need and the relationships required to make you successful.

Search Engine Roundtable has a great post that lists 60 of the hottest social media websites. My favorites are Stumble Upon, Flickr, and Facebook but many new sites are being added every day in hopes of being the next “big thing”.

My suggestion is to find a few sites you like and make the most of them. Don’t spread yourself too thin by joining as many sites as you can. Build your profile on a few sites and create solid relationships. Once you have those sites working for you, then move on to some other ones.

Who knows, you may see a need somewhere and come up with your own idea for a social media site and become the next big thing yourself.