Category — Interviews

Several months ago, I was contemplating putting together a list for this blog because we all know that every serious blogger’s got to make at least one resource list, right? As a result, I got in contact with fellow work at home mom and social media expert, Shana Albert, to discuss an idea I had. I was blown away! Not only because Shana was extremely helpful, but because she sacrificed her valuable work time, to essentially, encourage a total stranger (me) in my quest to develop the “perfect list“.

Since then, it has been a privilege to get to know Shana through various interviews in and around the blogosphere as well as through her own blog, Social Desire. I have found her to be not only honest, smart, and humorous in her posts, but above all gracious in the social networks she participates in.

So without further ado, here is a candid e-mail interview with Social Media Expert and Mom: Shana Albert………….

1. You are undeniably one of the most prominent women of the social media revolution. Tell us a little about yourself and what got you interested in social media in the first place?

Well, I don’t know about that, but thank you for such an amazing introduction.

I’m a Mom and an Internet Entrepreneur. I’m fortunate enough to be able to work out of my home, so I’m home to take care of and bring up my children. However, since I have been out of the full-time “real world” Work Force I’ve been working more hours than ever.

2. Many folks are trying to get into social media, and some just don’t get it. There is often a misunderstanding of “using a community for traffic” vs. “being a valuable member of the community”. Can you give us an idea of how you explain social media to the “newbie”?

Social Media is and should always be about Community. That is what Social Media is all about. Plain and Simple. If you aren’t a valuable member of the Community you won’t last very long there. If the community senses that you are gaming it they will let you know it one way or the other…. Just like you would know in a “Real World” Community if you weren’t welcome. If in a Real World Community you were “Gaming” it the community would make you aware that they don’t appreciate it. You better believe that if a “Virtual World” Community felt you were gaming it…. They would let you know.

I wrote a post a few months back about using analogies to explain Social Media to people. I’ve learned that using analogies is a great way to explain things that are normally difficult to explain. I usually compare social media to something they already understand. For example, I compared Social Media to High School, Shaun at Grin & Grumble explains Social Media by talking about swimmers in a pool (Social Media being the Pool and Bloggers being the different types of swimmers in the Pool of Social Media), there is even an amazing analogy comparing a symphony orchestra with social media. So, you see, using analogies is an amazing way to explain Social Media to a newbie. Just find a topic that interests them and compare Social Media to that.

3. Tell us about the blogs you write for and the sites you maintain?

I own a Social Media Blog called Social Desire. This is where I write about Social Media and Web 2.0. Ever since I started participating in Social Media activities I have fallen head over heals in love with it. Social Desire is where I write about my desire for Social Media and Web 2.0.

I am also one of the authors on Collective-Thoughts. Collective-Thoughts is a group blog made up of some of the most amazing social media minds out there and I’m honored to write along side of them. I also own a bunch of other websites and blogs. I don’t just stick to one topic. My websites are made up of many different niches. I have many interests, and designing / writing for different websites keeps me from getting bored. I am lucky enough to be able to do a little work here and there on many topics that interest me. Although, I would like to work on my static websites more often…. I just don’t have as much time as I would like.

Much of my time is taken up by running my e-Commerce site. I designed my own Preschool Curriculum that I sell. So, this particular business takes up much of my workday.

4. What are your favorite social media sites and which have been the most effective in sending traffic subscribers and comments to your blogs?

My favorite Social Networking sites right now are StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Twitter and Facebook. They are each very different from each other, but very special to me in their own way. My workday is extremely busy and the time I have available for social networking in a given day is limited. I stick to these four because I feel that they give me exactly what I need in the least amount of time. I just don’t have any more time than I already give to social network.

StumbleUpon is very good for sending traffic your way. Plus, I have discovered so many websites stumbling around that I just probably wouldn’t have come across with out it.

Sphinn is the Social Networking Community where my heart is. I’ve met a lot of people that I feel will be my friends and colleagues for life. And, if your site is about SEO, Marketing or Social Media this is the Social Networking site for you.

Twitter and Facebook are a ton of fun and great for networking through quick messages and fun games. This is a different method of social networking than the other two, but equally effective in a much different way. Communication is a great way to keep your name on the minds of the people within the Community.

5. I have seen you Twitter about your kids and having them home from school for a sick day, snow day, etc. how do you arrange your day based on their schedules and priorities?

Hahaha… I don’t arrange. My life is in constant chaos.

My children always come first. So, their needs and activities also come before mine. I plan my days, but they don’t always follow this plan. Their needs get pushed in between my list of projects all the time. It is how my life is…. How it has always been. I’m not sure if I even know how to work any other way. I think I’m more structured in chaos…. Is that even possible?

6. About 12 yrs ago I was a mystery shopper when my oldest child was just a little guy. You have written many posts about how to be a mystery shopper, pet sitter and more. What are your memories of your earliest jobs?

Ooooh, what a fun question!!

Most of my memories of jobs early on (teen years) were more about being social…. Ironic, huh? I took a job if it paid at least minimum wage, sounded half-way decent, but most importantly… I would be working with people I enjoy to be around. My memories of jobs back then are filled with a lot of fun and laughter. Some of my earliest jobs were babysitter, Hostess, keypuncher, salesperson in a toy department, and a bank teller. The bank teller job I interviewed the day after I graduated from High school. That was my first Professional Job after High School and before College. I didn’t go to College until I was 21, so I had many years of working professionally first.

7. What do you consider to be your best personal strength in social media?

I would have to say honesty, integrity, morals & values.

Looking back at how far I’ve come in Social Media in the past 6 months has led me to believe that my success is because I’m being the real me…. The only me I know how to be. I treat people with respect. I treat people the way I want to be treated myself. I follow the same principles that I was taught as a young girl and I follow the same principles out in the real world. There is no reason why I would act any other way in my Social Networking communities.

8. What is your advice to moms, like yourself, wanting to get started with a career online, maybe with an e-commerce store, or hoping to make money from a blog?

Be ready to work hard because it is not going to be easy. But, it can be done. A mom can do quite well running a business out of her home. But, she must understand that simply creating a website or blog is not going to bring in customers or work. Plus, there are a lot of sites out there promising Moms the world. Moms have to be very careful not to fall for false promises. She needs to trust her instincts. If a website is promising her a fortune and something doesn’t feel right…. It probably isn’t.

9. What do you want your children to know about social media and what steps are you taking to make sure they are protected online with networking sites like Facebook and MySpace?

Your children and Social Media needs to be taken seriously and with a lot of precautions. I am very careful when it comes to my children spending time online. Obviously, my 4 and 6 year old are too young to be spending anytime at all online without me. And, certainly they wouldn’t be a Community Member at any of these Social Networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. However, I have a son that will be turning 12 later this month. He is at the age that not only should I be concerned, but I need to keep being involved in his time he spends online.

His time online is limited. He is not a member of MySpace or Facebook. He is just way too young. There are children’s communities that he is a member of, but again I limit the time he spends there. And, every night I check to see where the children went during their travels online. I have software installed on the family computer to keep the children safe if I do walk away. And, I involve myself in most if not all of their internet travels. And, I think that is soooo… important.

I hope you all have enjoyed getting to know Shana as much as I have. She is an asset to the community and I am honored to call her “friend”. Thank you so much Shana!

Brian gave 10 great reasons to do interviews on your blog, so I took his advice and choose someone that I am quite fascinated with to do my first interview at Social Media Mom, Doug March.

Doug is one of the great minds behind the tattletale Twitter site, Twittertale, and the more recent Politweets, a site for political tweeting. Doug was gracious enough to find time over the weekend to do a candid e-mail interview with me, so without further ado, I’d like to introduce Doug March!

1. Tell us a little about your background, and how it prepared you for your break into social news sites?

In school I studied 3d modeling and animation (digital imaging at the University of Dayton), the internet was just a blip on the map at the time. We knew about it but people were not sure yet how to use it (circa 97/98). Post graduation I moved to the washington DC area and spent most of the first 7 years working as a contractor for the US government (Booz Allen and BAE Systems). Most of my work was design related. Creating various web based training sites, communication materials and conference materials. Those 7 years were beneficial to my career but it wasn’t till I read Jeffery Zeldman’s book “designing with web standards” that I started to see the light and understand what the web really is. I then began working on my own personal site, taking part in others and started hanging with the web community in DC.

I honestly don’t see myself as “breaking into social news sites”, In regards to Politweets a group of friends saw a need and we tried to help and close the gap. Between some conversations and then watching what people were saying and doing on twitter, we came to the conclusion that politweets needed to happen.

I also really don’t see the difference between social news and regular news. Sure NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and CNN have more money and resources to provide a service to you, however citizens also have a voice and those voices are being heard on sites like digg, mixx, reddit and other so called “social news” sites. All news is social so I have a hard time putting it in silos. The real power is getting stories out there that don’t fit into the 30min slot that the nightly news provides. That is what happens with the sites I mentioned and I also am starting to see that happen with politweets.

I personally have seen many stories break on twitter. The announcement of the iphone SDK, Heath Ledger’s death and many others of varying topics.

2. Are you pleased with the usage and turnout on Twittertale and Politweets so far? What are your goals?

Yes I am, I am really overwhelmed by all the kind words that people have posted online. It is a great feeling to see something that you created helping others or in the case of twittertale just allowing a quick laugh and a break from a normally hectic day.

Generally my goals are finding solutions to a defined problem. I know, I know that sounds like marketing speak. People are always referring to me as “the idea guy”, I think i just like to solve everyday problems. Twittertale doesn’t really solve a problem, some might say it causes one. You probably won’t see much changing on that site, we have talked about creating some fun charts and graphs but due to time I think more time and energy will be spent on Politweets and other ventures.

It was really cool to see Twitter post Politweets on their blog. It was sort of like “the father acknowledging the sons accomplishments”.

3. Besides foreigners swearing in English and being interested in American politics, what are some other trends you’ve noticed from analyzing tweets?

#1 thing is how people outside of the national news want to provide information. You would think that politweets would highlight a lot of negativity in politics, people like to complain for some reason. Except the exact opposite was seen, it has provided a place for citizen journalists to go to find and share posts. I believe we have made a number of connections that might not have been made without the site. I have even had people tell me that they signed up for twitter, used it for a bit but wasn’t till they saw politweets that they found the benefit from it.

4. Twittertale is a fun niche site, have you seen an increase in naughty word usage on Twitter since you launched Twittertale?

Not really, at first everyone was “testing the system” which provided a spike. I would say we might have created a meme though. I do see a lot of people saying “fucking bitch balls” or just “bitch balls” a lot. That order represents the top 3, 4 and 5 most said curse words on twitter, so that has been a lot of fun watching.

5. What, in your opinion, is the long-term solution for the monetization of Twitter and are there plans to monetize Twittertale and Politweets?
That is a great question. A number of people have come up to me and said “I didn’t understand twitter until I saw your sites”. What did they mean by that? Well twitter by itself is limiting in characters but not in usage. This is one of its greatest assets. People want more features but I believe it is close to feature complete. There is now a “river of information flowing though it” (see this post and associated links — http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/01/08/lets-call-it-a-twiver/ ) I am not quite sure how, but here lies the solution to monetization. One possible solution is creating small niche communities that come together around one topic (those already exist and can be seen by politweets and frozen peas/peaple) and then messaging them with unobtrusive advertisements that are more help than harm. I am not sure if you are familiar with “the deck”, but that has to be the best advertising model out there. A group of sites that believe in a set of products and unobtrusively advertise those products. I love google but how often do you think a contextual advertisement on a site has also been something that that site has used and supports?

6. Do you participate in any other social media sites and if so, which ones?

Yes I do, a lot actually (username is generally always marchdoe)
flickr,
last.fm,
del.icio.us,
pownce, and upcoming.org
just to name a few.

The only one I am not a member of is facebook, and don’t see that happening anytime soon. I am not sure why I never signed up, perhaps it is just the case that I have enough “noise” in my life.

7. Tell us about Min, Gabe and Jason and Character140?

Min and Gabe are amazing ruby on rails developers that I work with at revolutionhealth.
Jason is a front-end developer that works at mixx.

Gabe = ducktyper/
has created a lot of cool stuff, one site being dclicio.us/

Min = thoughtsatsix. Min created a cool iphone app for DC Metro riders called - meenster.

Jason sixtwothree blog.
Jason has been one of the key players bringing together the DC Tech Community, he started refresh-dc.org and also was one of the organizers of the first barcampdc.

We are all friends who have a passion for the internet and when the idea came to mind they were excited to make it happen.

Character140 is just a name to operate under, a collective of individuals that have come together to create sites based on mobile/sms technology.

8. What will happen to Politweets when the election is over?

Hmmm I haven’t really thought about that. It is really hard to say. That won’t be for another 9 or 10 months and a lot can happen in that time with technology. Hopefully we can keep it going and expand on the ideas we have for it. A local organization The Sunlight Foundation does a lot of great work enlightening citizens of their elected officials actions. Perhaps we could lean in that direction and help contribute to the great work they have already started, but with twitter as the engine behind it.

9. What is your interest in reality cooking shows and any chance you are looking to develop a Twitter-like site that has to do with cooking or food?

I love to cook and I enjoy the various shows out there about cooking. I won’t miss an episode of Top Chef and am really looking forward to the next season. As of right now I am not working on a twitter-like site for cooking or food. I will say that I am working on something that is food related. It is just in the beginning stages and when the time is right I will share.

An idea does come to mind though, perhaps a twitter restaurant suggestion app would be something that could be quite fun. Call it a “real time yelp.com“.

We also have a site in DC called “the dc concierge”, how cool would it be if you could send a tweet to a username “I am on 12th and m street and I am feeling like Italian, where should I go?” and get a response right back. I know this probably wouldn’t scale, but it def could be fun.

Oh I am also working on getting a reservation at the French Laundry, any suggestions on how to make that happen would be great.

10. Any advice to those looking to use the open API of Twitter to start their own sites?

I have some good friends in the film business. Mark and Jay Duplass (wrote and directed the Puffy Chair and another movie coming out called Baghead), I will always remember talking to them about “creating things”. It wasn’t till Mark and Jay just started shooting everything they could think of that they made it to the next step. They would shoot a short movie a each day over a summer. Whatever came to mind that day was the movie. They thought one of the movies was really good and showed it to friends, and on a whim decided to send it to Sundance. Low and behold it got into the festival (This is John = name of the movie).

I think we all should prescribe to that. Just create, find what you like and just make things. Sure “some of it is going to suck” (their words not mine) but you are going to create a lot of things that many people are going to enjoy. So just create, open your computer and make things. The things you are proud of share with others, post to the internet, print out and share with friends. Nothing but good can come from that.

I really believe it is easy to “talk”, but very hard to “do”. So put those words into actions and your work will be noticed.

Doug, it has been a privilege to get to know you and I so appreciate the time you took to share with us. I hope you will keep us posted on new endeavors and continue to “let us know what you are doing” in the world of microblogging.

photo via nowsourcing