Social Media

Have you ever wanted to know the ins and outs of social media?

Are you tired of submitting to Digg and not getting any traffic?

Are you looking to build traffic to your website in a systematic way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then consider joining the members of Performancing Hive each month for a live, one-hour Skype discussion about how to most effectively use social media systems in a mutually benefitial way (for you and the social network).

At Performancing, we believe that social media systems should always be seeded with quality, interesting content that will appeal to the social media community. Social media systems are not to be gamed. They are to be used smartly. We always advocate the submission of quality content. But good content does not promote itself.

If you’d like to join us for our first monthly Social Media Bootcamp on June 11th at 11am Eastern, please become a member of Performancing Hive.

So the other day I had this idea. Why not build a tool that only shows the stories that went popular on at least two social voting sites?

I passed the idea by a few people. Mubashar Iqbal from Suffolk Software took that bait and quickly built the app.

While development is still in BETA, you should really take a look. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the results and think you end up with a really strong list of articles.

Here’s the site: SocialMediaPop.

What do you think of the results?

With so many ways online to tell people what you’re up to/ what you’ve done, lifestream filtering is becoming a popular way to package all those personal-feed items. A lifestream is an aggregation of your social media feeds. A lifestream filter helps you to filter out the noise and create a custom stream of information. For example, you might want one lifestream that shows your Twitter tweets, your images and what you’re listening to on Last.fm. Then you might want a separate stream that just shows your blog posts from multiple sites and any YouTube videos you’ve created.

Lifestream Filtering in Dipity Timeline

There are a growing number of tools for lifestream filtering out there, but I like to see a visual representation of information whenever possible. After reading Markus Merz’s take on the Dipity Timeline web service, I signed up for an account (free).

Dipity makes it very easy to your  filter your personal lifestream feeds. While you are signing up for your account, you’re presented with an easy-to-use form for entering a variety of social media details (usernames, email addresses, profile links, RSS feed URLs, etc.). At present, this is what you have to choose from:

1. Picasa
2. Twitter
3. Pandora
4. WordPress
5. Last.fm
6. Flickr
7. Yelp
8. Blogger
9. YouTube
10. miscellaneous RSS feed

(Note: you get these same options any time you create a new timeline and want to add feeds.)

A lot of popular social media sites are not in the list. However, you can use option #10 repeatedly, after the initial lifestream timeline is built, to add your other social media feeds. The result is a handy timeline representation of your aggregated lifestream items:

You can remove feeds or add feeds by using the “Manage Feeds” option on your personal lifestream timeline page.  (You only get one of these, but you can use your Dipity account to build other lifestreams as regular Dipity Timelines with their own URLs.) You can view your lifestream in Timeline, List View, Flipbook or Map View modes. (The latter requires tagging stream items with geographical information – i.e., geocoding.)

Since Dipity Timeline lets you mix events and feeds, you can produce some very interesting lifestream timelines. For example, you could have one lifestream that contains your Twitter tweets and supplement those items with images or video “events”. So if you Twitter about movies and film, you can add an “I’ve just seen Iron Man” event, then include a poster image and video clip. The resulting is a custom lifestream timeline.

Have a go at Dipity and you’ll at least have a bit of fun. (There’s a developer API, if you want to get serious.) I had trouble adding my Last.fm and Flickr feeds, though. And the resulting timeline is really creaky while redrawing when switching duration view. (That is, if you change fom viewing your timeline over “1 year” to, say, “3 months”, some of the items do not redraw right away. So you might see an expanse of nothing for several seconds. Be patient and the items will pop up.)

Curriculum Vitae Timelines

It occurred to me there’s a special type of “lifestream” that might need to be interactive: your C.V. – Curriculum Vitae (aka “resume”). If your body of work (articles, podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts, etc.) is available online, a timeline might be a handy way to present it all. Since Dipity allows you to mix RSS feed items with manually-added events, you can always add details about jobs you’ve held, etc. The only thing Dipity doesn’t do – that I’ve seen – is allow “duration” information like SIMILE Timeline does. So you don’t “see” when one job ended and another started. Still, for those of you that freelance, this could be an excellent interactive way to present your CV to potential clients.

Groupstreams

Why build lifestreams for just one person? Dipity allows you to assign editors, so you can create “groupstreams” too. This could be for a group of friends, or for a team of employees. Here’s the process:

1. A group “manager” builds a timeline that includes Twitter feeds for all group members.
2. Each member is added as an editor.
3. Each member adds new events as desired. You can add images, video clips, description, a location, and a link to each event. The link, when clicked, opens a new window. So you could link to all kinds of web applications – including a live video feed, an online meeting room, Campfire, mind mapping, etc.

Since you can add future-dated items, groupstreams could be used to show schedules for a virtual team, plan get togethers and much more. (Note: future-dated events will not show before the actual date to anyone except Dipity members that have editing access to the timeline.)

Summary

Dipity does have a developer API, but its REST-based approach is very different than SIMILE Timeline’s interface. Of course, you can use either tool for more than just lifestreams. If you want to learn more about lifestreams and lifestreaming, visit Lifestream Blog.

Have fun, and enjoy this “Bring the Noise” video of Anthrax and Public Enemy. Flavor Flaaaav!

The perception of someone is an amazing thing in our culture. People perceive others in very special ways because of how they represent themselves. This is also true for bloggers, and if you want to be the big shot blogger, you have to walk the walk. The authoritative blogger asserts himself or herself as thus.

I believe a blogging authority is an author that people will look to for advice, commentary, and information on any particular subject discussed by the author. This person should also earn the respect of a majority of his or her readers, even if they do not particularly agree on a particular issue. However, all people have the potential to become an authority.

It is all about how people perceive you, and you should create this perception by being professional. You need to create a great image for yourself, as when it comes down to it, you and I are just bloggers; however, as I am writing for this blog, people will generally perceive me as an authority on what I am writing about. People, at the very least subconsciously, are very likely to perceive me as an authority.

You will need to have a certain amount of professionalism about your work and the way you act if you expect to achieve greatness in the blogosphere. Perhaps authority and professionalism are closely related, but they are very different; however, having both would be the ideal situation. Lying, over advertising, being gimmicky, and many other things could harm your chances at ever establishing yourself as an authority. But, this also requires some brain power.

Having knowledge is a great way to have people respect you, but only knowing the facts is not good enough. You should be able to answer the question of what, why, and how as well. If you can provide people with in-depth information, you will be seen as a much more knowledgeable, reliable, and valuable resource to those which have read your material. Also, someone that has been willing to put in the research to gain the knowledge about what they are discussing will show in the finished work.

Finally, if you are going to be an authority, you must put the truth ahead of all else. Like a journalist, the truth and your readers should come first. If you build a name for yourself, it is just as easy to have it crumble from a single lapse in judgement. Build your name, protect your name.

Hopefully you understand now that it is everyday people that have built their authority. How else do these sites like Joystiq, Scobleizer, TechCrunch, and ProBlogger get built? The authors established themselves as an authority. The only question is when will you establish yourself as an authority?

How many social media accounts do you have? I lost track months ago – and that’s not including the seventeen niche voting sites that I convinced myself and other members of Hive that I was going to build. Last year. Fact is, I already have too many accounts to keep track of, let alone actually use. Nevertheless, my account list will still grow as my online friends explore new sites.

Earlier today, one of my colleagues AIMed me with a social voting link that he wanted me to vote up. I’m not a member of the site in question and I loathed the thought of signing up for yet another social voting site. However, part of my online functionality is to be “social”. That means having the basic accounts on the most popular sites, plus accounts on a few niche sites including a few that I co-own. But I find that the more sites I join, the less I use any of my existing social accounts. There seems to be a law of diminishing returns, and I’m afraid my social effectiveness might decline. I’m loathe to join more, but some of my fellow bloggers get offended when I won’t join the site they’ve just emailed me about.

Unfortunately, the fact is that being “social” is becoming an absolute necessity for online success for web workers, including pro bloggers. (Business Week has an extensive article on how social media will change your business, whether or not you’re using blogs. A lot of this article is an assessment of how certain large corporations or even formerly offline consultants/ marketers are faring using various types of social media.)

Still, there’s only so much time in the day to get all the other work done. Where do you draw the line? Personally, I believe it’s better to hire an SMM (Social Media Marketer) who can focus on the promotions side, and possibly use  your accounts as well. Except that this is of course frowned upon by some communities. Also, if you’re bootstrapping your online presence, you may not have the funds to hire someone. So you’re back to having to make lots of social friends and learning how to balance your work, your promoting, and the promotion of your online friends.

P.S. I joined the site that my colleague wanted me to vote at. I also “followed” about 30-40 members after spending about an hour. Several of the members I followed also added me in short order.

I joined the “new” site because Digg has now set the bar way too high and seemingly discounted the value of “friends”. I still prefer sites like Stumbleupon over anything else, though apparently Twitter can get you a lot of traffic if you use it properly. Something else I’ll have to explore.

What do social media sites do you prefer, both in terms of liking the functionality as well as effectiveness?

Breaking: Feedburner takes away all-time stats.

Breaking: Feedburner restores all-time stats.

Now that Feedburner all-time stats are back, you should go check how your remarkable content (e.g., pillar content, resource bait, traffic bait, linkbait, etc.) is doing. Is your linkbait failing on Digg? That’s a refrain I’ve been hearing from some bloggers lately, especially after Digg’s recent algorithm change. Someone I know had 220 votes on one submission and no home page (last I heard).

What to do you about failing on Digg, possibly because of your domain name being “tainted”? Cameron Olthuis suggests building mini-sites for posting the linkbait to.

But how does building and baiting mini-sites help the domain you’re NOT getting diggs on? Go read Cameron’s article. It’s brief and to the point. And while you’re over at Search Engine Land, check out Debra O. Mastaler’s roundup of link building tools. You’ll need these tools more than ever, thanks to more webmasters avoiding reciprocal links.

Another thing to possibly avoid: targeting a specific search engine. Though that doesn’t mean you should not follow the changes in search engine algorithms.

Several SEO websites are reporting that Yahoo-owned Del.icio.us has blocked some search engine spiders from accessing certain links on del.icio.us. A couple of people tested this theory by trying Del.icio.us page accesses using a faked User-Agent value and were denied.

On the flipside, Andy Beard is blocking Googlebot. Specifically, he’s blocking paid reviews posted on his site from being indexed by Google. He apparently feels that Google’s preference for all of us to use “no follow” on any link that has been purchased is not the answer.

Paid reviews are, for some, a supplement to remarkable content. If you’re just starting to build remarkable content, check out these proven headline templates.

Of course, remarkable content should include multimedia such as video. DailyMotion is now offering HD embeds, which you might want to use in a video marketing campaign.

Though no matter how much remarkable content you have, if you don’t join social media sites to help promote, it’s unlikely your site’s profile will increase before blogger’s depression sets in. On the other hand, you might make too many online friends and be overwhelmed with requests for social loving.