soulati.com

Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging

Soulati-'TUDE!

Is #FollowFriday Still Cool, Twitter?

By

This week I read a blog post by Bill Dorman who is lamenting the turn of events in social media – the “no one’s home, but the lights are on” syndrome many of us are feeling. In that same breath, he asked, “Why isn’t #Follow Friday cool anymore?”

Is it? Is the previously popular Twitter weekly hashtag, #FollowFriday or #FF, during which peeps list all their faves so others know whom to follow, now passé?

What’s your take? Here’s mine…

** I welcome and appreciate all #FollowFriday tweets; in fact, it’s darn nice to be acknowledged by someone who takes their time to put a list together and include me. Mark C. Robins is one of the most thoughtful and never misses a Friday. I am in awe of this because people are just not doing it any longer. (Mark is with  Lawyer Locate in Canada.)

** Twitter has changed forever. I lament the Twitter of yore. While I wasn’t an early adopter in 2008, I did jump on in early 2009 and was hooked…for life (we’ll see). There were rainy Fridays (kinda like today) that I watched the tweets roll in and interacted all over the world. No longer.

** My Twitter stream is laden with links. That’s why I’m trying not to add links to that many tweets any more. I want to keep my tweets authentic and humanistic. Because you ought not to RT a tweet with a link unless you open it to verify, I have changed my RT patterns, too.

** Back to #FF, as I just digressed…I hasten a guess that relationships on Twitter are more superficial than before? Do peeps take the time they used to to develop in-depth friendships as before? I’m saying no, and this contributes to the lack of recommendations.

** What about time? If your time is as limited as mine, then this is the biggest culprit.

** How about channel overload? G+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr blogs, your blog, Foursquare, Yelp…OMG! We are at the peak of sensory overload! Our cups runneth over! How can we develop new relationships the way we used to via social media enough to #FF?

** Like any trend, the newness wears off, and the “abuse” (I use this lightly) of #FF caused a bit of negativity. When the bots rolled in and started to add lists of peeps haphazardly with #FF, that’s when we became suspect of #FF recommendations from peeps we didn’t know. Shall we blame it on the bots?

So, finally, Bill, #FollowFriday is still VERY cool when:

1. It comes from a genuine and authentic place – your heart.

2. It recognizes someone for a job well done, gratitude, an impact, an influence, and more.

3. You want to bring a smile to someone’s face who needs a lift.

4. You want to be a coolio friend who recognizes someone else’s accomplishments.

5. You want to plain old #RocksHot.

So, I’m gonna just #FF this entire community right here…you guys do #RockHot. THANKS!

Power Blogger Bullies Baby Blogger, Threatens Lawsuit

By

A baby blogger in my peer group (we’re young) has been writing incredibly investigative and analytical posts about in-depth topics many of us wouldn’t take time to write. I’ve been noticing and marveling over the time and thought she’s puts into her content. She’s also become a guest author on a regular basis for several Ad Age Power Bloggers the likes of Danny Brown and Mark Schaefer.

And, that is exactly with whom she had a run in this week — a power blogger (not Danny or Mark); a run in that is akin to a cyber blogger bullying experience.

This woman wrote an article about the use of back links to drive traffic to websites via affiliate marketing. Apparently, there’s something of a black social media market for +1, links, SEO and key-word rich posts, and the like.

What ensued on her post in comments was an outright negative attack by this power blogger who demanded the blog post be retracted, threatened to sue her for libel and refused to calmly review the issue. Following this incident, the said power blogger was tooting his horn on Twitter saying he’d successfully corralled and shut down another “hater.”

Imagine that. An Ad Age Power Blogger took the bull by the horns and called out this baby blogger with no phone call, respect or attempt to understand the facts and the reality.  The power blogger’s brand remained intact with another notch on his belt while the baby blogger’s psyche and brand are in need of repair. And, the communications strategy to manage her response has been ongoing throughout the weekend; I know because she and I have been in continuous conversation about appropriate messaging and the strength of the story she needs to tell as a follow-up.

This situation makes me sad — there are so many of us who don’t know the ins and outs of every aspect of blogging — there is a back end that needs coding, there are tools and apps to drive traffic and interactivity, and link building and affiliate marketing have a key place in driving success, too. We who are innocently learning the ropes and bringing authentic content to the forefront are suffering from the likes of egocentric individuals who elect to use bullying tactics and the threat of a lawsuit instead of coherent conversation.

I applaud Neiclole Crepeau for her steadfastness in this matter, and she’s aware it’s been a learning experience. She admits she could’ve chosen a word or two differently, and she has sought counsel to determine how best to proceed. At the same time, she is smarting from the experience, and yet, she’s done absolutely nothing wrong; she has corroborated this. While I will not name names in the event that this dude gets his underwear further in a bundle, I will share that his blog rhymes with “sloppyfrogger.”

As we experience the tipping point in social media where automation is devouring authenticity, those of us still developing and delivering authentic content in small communities should open our eyes widely that something as innocent as blogging can be fraught with landmines. This situation is a good reminder that words are not innocent; they can be taken differently by whomever is reading.

Is Twitter Broken?

By

The future of Twitter is anyone’s guess, and you can imagine I have some opinions on that (who, moi?). I mentioned recently, something’s afoot in social media land and I couldn’t quite tap a crystalline here’s-what’s-wrong answer.

I think I’m getting closer.

Since Triberr hit the landscape, and I’ve seen everyone in my social media circle (hi, >) run to adopt, my stream is, ahem, littered, or shall we say cluttered, with Triberr short url links to everyone’s blog posts. In fact, in my list of favorite peeps, there’s nary an original 140 without a link to Triberr. OK, maybe not ever, just frequently. (This is NOT bad; it’s an observation that’s bothering me a tad.)

Back in the day when I launched Twitter 2 ½ years ago, it was absolutely a channel to create community and engage authentically. In fact, to Mark W. Schaefer I owe much of my community growth as we began the same time, and his blog {grow} was our (community) home base.

In the last many weeks, I’ve noticed a change in my Twitter stream content. (Have you in yours?)

* There is less original thought to anything without a link attached.

* Followers who are real people are fewer and far in between; there’s a plateau and brick wall obstacle in the speed with which you can create a genuine community.

* There are more spammers sifting through the cracks and sending DMs with links from my trusted peeps. I opened a few of those just this week several times; clever, too: “Jayme, is this you in this video?” I fell for that.

* I have often promoted Twitter to my clients as the hub from which links stem and drive traffic to blogs, landing pages and websites. This is still sound strategy, but it’s becoming more of a challenge to get peeps to open links.

* This is where community building comes in, STILL. To build a community, you need to be a trust agent. To be a trust agent, you need authentic content, to develop authentic content, you need to be original and not spammy. To be successful you need to cut through the clutter of automation and keep the real you  you.

I’d love to get your opinion on this; who else is seeing this something happening with Twitter? (And, OK, Twitter is NOT broken, necessarily, it’s evolving to a new level for the masses; it’s the post-engage phase where ROI takes over.)

Run to Google+ to Engage!

By

I would be remiss if I did not share my thoughts about Google+ after a weekend of playing. Here’s the upshot…RUN to Google+ and reserve your profile and nickname before others, especially if your name is common or there are duplicate names to yours.

The site is intuitive, addictive, fast, and organized. My network is not just being built from Twitter and Facebook, thank goodness, it’s coming alive with people I don’t even know.

* And, that’s what’s cool. Google+ is organized in circles. You can put peeps into a circle of friends, social media types, PR, family, following, or any other category you create and name. I found that I have pretty much three circles only; not sure I need to skew them deeper than that. If I did, it would be a simple click with a really cool interface to make it happen.

*As for content, I’m a bit unsure about posts up there. The weekend was full of banter; ahem, Ms. Dietrich was scamming the poor system in search of “free beer.”  I think she found it.

*What people are saying, and I fully agree, is they don’t want to see content being cross-posted from Twitter and Facebook. Because so many of us are connected on all channels right now, the cross pollination of content and repetitiveness would become  unruly. This remains to be seen…how folks will elect to share.

* The jury is still out how to best use this channel. What I’m hoping for is a more professional channel of business folks that would create a hotbed of learning, testing, and challenging/useful content. Again, if you follow those types of peeps and organize others into circles, that is highly likely to happen.

* Here’s one critical tip — secure your nickname. Here’s the link and it appears like this when you’re done In box one, type in the name you’d like to use to identify yourself. In box two, copy and paste just the numbers from your current Google+ account (found in the url in your browser). Click “add” and voila. You can use this to identify yourself rather than a cumbersome set of numbers and unwieldy url.

* When people  you don’t know add you to their circles, add them, too. In this beta phase, all peeps should be safe (not spammers yet unless her name is cough, Gini, cough).

* Re analytics, there’s a lot of banter about whether this channel will help drive blog traffic. Why wouldn’t it? I already had an alert for my profile here; I know that Google, being the search engine it is, is going to be monitoring traffic inside and pushing attention to the outside.

* One thing that is slightly disturbing to me, though, is the amount of data being transmitted via Gmail, to Crackberry and to iPad2, plus other mobile devices. Think about it…how will we keep data plan charges down when the mobile providers are all going to fee for usage plans? Anyone else have a thought on this? I got the idea after seeing the huge spike in Gmail traffic to my iPad and Blackbery; that’s a bit worrisome.

What’s your first impression, folks?

Google+ Will Social Media Fall?

By

This post first appeared July 16, 2010, and what prompted me to head back through the archives to find it again was this post by Antonia Harler about Google — A Successful Road to  Failure. She shares all the write ups about Google + that we all have seen. And, she hit on what I suggested a year ago — no one has more time to develop yet another social network, do we? (Thanks, @GiniDietrich, for the link there.)

See if this resonates from a year ago with you…I felt pretty strongly about developing more networks a year ago; I may be less against it today, but my time is more limited. Share your thoughts!

It’s all about community, connectivity and social networking, and people are joining in droves. Apparently, 96 percent of GenY have joined a social network. The fastest-growing segment on Facebook is women 55 – 65 years old.

The more cool social networks, publishing networks, and professional networks that launch to accompany Stumble, Posterous, YouTube, Friend Feed, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and the like, the more consumers will weary. No one has time to find friends to add to a network. Do you?

I learned today that Stumble requires a network of Stumblers who share cool sites with one another. I’m always interested in seeing cool sites, but I’ve no time to develop a network of connected Web site lovers. When I launched Friend Feed, I thought I could consolidate my social media into one platform (which I can), but it, too, wants friends to connect on the same platform and be networked. On Twitter,  new followers invite me to join them on Facebook. Why? I don’t even know them.

And, that’s it.

That’s the reason social media will fall flat on its pitoot. People cannot spend eight hours a day creating community and populating it with more and more friends. There are only six degrees of separation from all of us, but seriously, folks, who has that many “friends” for real?

Not I.