Social Media – Page 2

For social media, Facebook has the numbers

Pew Internet reports that Facebook is far and away the most popular social media site for adults.

It’s cold and lonely on the cutting edge. But some people like to be there. Like my hip friend who sniffed that “nobody cool uses Facebook any more.” (Shades of Yogi Berra’s “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”)

Cool be damned.

The latest report from Pew Internet shows that as of September 2013, 71 percent of online adults use Facebook. Compare that to adult use of other social networking platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram), which Pew says hovers between 17 and 22 percent.

So we would like to focus our social media marketing efforts…where?

Actually, you can easily cover all the bases — Facebook and many more— by blogging your message. Then use your blogging software’s Publicize feature to send a linked excerpt of the blog post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. Metrics software such as StatCounter, Google Analytics, or a built-in statistics program like the one in WordPress will tell you which social media platform brings the most click-throughs to your original content.

Just curious — did you come to this post from one of those platforms?

All your friends belong to Facebook and LinkedIn

According to the new Pew Internet study, the relative likelihood of social network involvement is unrelated to gender, race/ethnicity, education level, household income, or urbanity.

Rely on LinkedIn for professional networking? Have a Facebook account or use Google+?

Chances are most of the rest of your world is right there with you:

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has been studying online adults’ social networking site use since 2005, and has seen substantial growth since then. Today, 72% of online adults use social networking sites. Although younger adults continue to be the most likely social media users, one of the more striking stories about the social networking population has been the growth among older internet users in recent years. Those ages 65 and older have roughly tripled their presence on social networking sites in the last four years—from 13% in the spring of 2009 to 43% now.

—Pew Internet

read the full report

The conclusion: If you’re online, you’re probably on a social networking site.

The Pew Internet report on use of social networks by online adults, based on fresh data from spring 2013, is fascinating. It shows that the relative likelihood of social network involvement is unrelated to gender, race/ethnicity, education level, household income, or urbanity. According to this chart from the Pew study, about the only differentiating factor is age:

However, the 65+ age group is currently the one in which social network involvement is increasing most rapidly.

An inside look at SEO that outsiders can understand

Rand Fishkin talks about what SEO is and isn’t, and what people (rightly or wrongly) think about search engine optimization.

Imagine trying to figure out what an airplane does by looking at one on display in a museum.

Now imagine trying to figure out what an airplane does by watching one that’s taking off. By catching something on the move, or in transition, so much more about what it does, and how it does it, becomes apparent.

So…I invite you to take a look at the blog post SEO thought-leader Rand Fishkin has written about the transition of his company SEOMoz to its new identity, Moz. Rand writes beautifully, and his decision to rebrand the company was all about what SEO is and isn’t, and what people (rightly or wrongly) think about search engine optimization. Think of it as an insiders look at SEO that outsiders can understand.

The “Mission & Vision” section of the post also contains a marvelously clear and unpretentious infographic. Infographics are the latest online communications fad and, predictably, about half of them seem to have been designed to communicate how trendy and clever the design firm is, with the actual client information being ignored or mangled in the process. As with many other aspects of marketing communications, the Moz folks know how to do things the right way.

Have a look.

And the next time people start whining to me that SEO is either confusing or inherently evil, I’m just sending them to this post.

MacVoices: Chuck Joiner and I talk about blogging

Chuck Joiner of MacVoices and I recorded a MacVoices show about blogging — the history, the growth, the high points, and the Dark Ages.

Chuck Joiner of MacVoices TV and I have been talking about blogging — the history, the growth, the high points and the Dark Ages. Last week, we got together and recorded a show on that topic.

We started back in the old days — with LiveJournal and the Golden Age of blogging when people found their voices and harnessed the publishing power of the World Wide Web. We talked about the rise and fall of newsreaders, and the effects that newer and nimbler social media platforms have had on the once-mighty blogosphere.

You can listen to (or download) the show online. You’ll also find today’s show on the MacVoices TV page in iTunes.

We’re planning to take a second shot at the topic in a few weeks, this time with some friends who will help us explore the uneasy relationship between journalism and blogging and — a hot topic for Chuck — the impact that SEO has had on blogging. Plus, I’m hoping to get in a segment on people whose blogs have been stepping stones on the way to book publishing.

Your questions and comments can help shape those next conversations. Please leave a message for us on the show’s page at MacVoices.

Social Media Survival presentation

A social media program that makes perfect sense today is likely to be significantly out of alignment in 18 months.

Last night I spoke about social media at Lee Schoentrup’s class on public relations writing at the University of Washington. This is the sixth year I’ve done the presentation. I think when I started, with blogger Peggy Sturdivant, all we talked about was…blogging.

Six years later, the list of social media tools I cover goes on, and on, and on. While in the past I’ve focused on social media strategies for particular tools, this year I revamped the presentation to focus on the need for a social media strategy that can roll with continuous change. I pointed to trends affecting social media, including:

Crowds (crowdsourcing, etc.)
Increasing use of mobile devices to create and access social media content
The return of organic content after the recent obsession with SEO

It’s clear to me that a social media program that makes perfect sense today is likely to be significantly out of alignment in 18 months. Who knew two years ago that companies would be getting mileage out of Facebook and Pinterest? How many companies are providing a good experience for the growing number of people who visit their blogs (or Facebook and LinkedIn pages) using a smartphone? How many are even aware of the social media consequences (good and bad) of sprinkling “Like” and “Share” buttons around their web pages?

I changed the topic of the presentation from “Social Media Success” to “Social Media Survival.” It’s a jungle out there.

Members of the UW class who would like to download a PDF of the Keynote presentation will find it here: SME – UW – 2013.

Social media trends for 2013: Bluster is out, thoughtfulness is in

Trends for 2013: Bragging, bluster, and boasting are out. Thoughtfulness, substance, and sustainability are in.

I’ve noticed a refreshing trend in 2013’s social media. I’m seeing it particularly in professional discussions on LinkedIn.

Bragging, bluster, and boasting are out.

Thoughtfulness, substance, and sustainability are in. Credibility is essential.

My own tolerance for micron-deep inspirational blather evaporated last night when I read a sad little rant on Inc.com that asserted that anyone who uses the three words “I will try” is an obvious loser. The only reason I was able to stifle my desire to track this blowhard down and commit mayhem was seeing that a few hundred commenters had beaten me to it.

They heard the words “I will try” as realistic, honest, and heartfelt. Like me, they’d had plenty of experience in recent years with bigmouths standing up and blatting “I will do X! I will do Y!” and not only not doing any of it, but disappearing from the scene shortly afterwards.

I’m thrilled when someone joins me in looking at a complex, difficult situation and says “I will try to fix this.” I find it eloquent, and particularly like the responsibility of the “I” rather than the emphatic but ultimately evasive battle cry of “This is going to get fixed!”

To paraphrase my late father, “Only wimps need hyperbole.” The rest of us can get by with clarity, honesty, and good intentions.

I will certainly try.

What I’ve been listening to and reading:

Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success (TED talk) “Any version of success has to admit what it’s losing out on.”
The Technium: The Post-Productive Economy
HasOffers.com: Why You Should Never, Ever Buy Facebook Fans

Three tools for getting a head start on the new year

Thank you so much for following Writer Way in 2012. Thanks for your comments and feedback, and for telling friends who are interested in writing and online communications about the blog.

Like everyone else, I’m crazy busy (or at least I think I am). I’d like to work more efficiently in 2013, so I’m collecting a few tools I believe will help me do that. Here’s what I’ve come up with, thus far:

A cheat sheet for sizing images for Facebook, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. (Courtesy of econsultancy.com)
Free project management software. I like the old-fashioned GANTT chart for trying to visualize and analyze who’s doing what, when, and which projects and tasks are interdependent. GanttProject lets you do that — so you can stop trying to run projects with Excel.
Inexpensive time-tracking, expense-tracking, and invoicing software (cloud-based). While I wouldn’t call Harvest elegant, I’d say it’s surprisingly full-featured and easy to use. For $12 a month, I get a system that lets me handle an unlimited number of clients, projects, and invoices — plus I can access the Harvest site from a browser or an iPhone/iPad app. (There’s even a free version that lets you track time and do invoicing for two projects — a great way to find out if Harvest is for you.)

Try ’em out. Let me know what you think — and what else you find that helps you get work done.

Happy Holidays! See you in 2013.

— Karen

How to lose at the social media game

Neglected social media accounts can tarnish an organization’s reputation.

Thunk.

I’m afraid that was the sound of my head hitting my desk. I’ve been dealing with people who have ambitious social media plans. They want to blog, start Twitter streams and Facebook pages, and run a Kickstarter campaign. They want to put forums on their organizations’ websites so their followers (what followers?) can have discussions with one another.

I go to their Twitter accounts and discover that they do, indeed, have 100 followers. However, they’ve never bothered to follow most of them back.

“Oh. Is that important?” they ask me.

Perhaps it’s just as well. Five of the followers turn out to be come-ons for porn sites.

“Oh, you mean I can block those?”

On the one hand, I have to admire people who fearlessly wade in to Twitter and Facebook and never bother to figure out what any of the settings or tools can do. On the other hand, social media is not a game where you get points just for showing up. You have to learn how to play the game, as well.

Twitter streams overrun by spammers, Facebook pages full of leaderless followers, or social media accounts of any kind neglected by their administrators speak louder than a dozen clever posts or tweets. And, unfortunately, what they say can tarnish an organization’s reputation.

The good news is that there are solutions: Hundreds of online resources on how to do social media, most of them pretty good. The bad news is that most organizations don’t seem to realize that they have a problem.

Let people see it all with Vizify

Vizify could become the new standard for professional online identity.

A problem

Website, blogs, LinkedIn bio…the list of online credentials I like to provide to potential clients keeps growing. Recently I’ve begun to view this as a problem. I find myself sending emails full of links, explaining each link with a little tagline, trying to anticipate what each prospect might want to see.

After I hit “Send,” I worry that I’m boring people with Too Much Information. And it certainly does make for ugly-looking emails.

The solution

Last week I received a Google alert about a client. The link in the alert was to something called “Vizify.” I clicked and gaped. There was a fabulous infographic about the client: His picture, quotes, and links to his webpages and blogs. It was colorful, it was fun, it was professional — and it beat my fussy linked-cluttered email by a mile.

Of course, I went right over to Vizify.com and signed up for my own Vizify page. I was impressed with how easy it is to use the online tool, and how great the result looks. You can link to any webpage you want, or let Vizify use algorithms to pull your content directly from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare or Instagram. Once published, my site was immediately picked up by search engines and appeared high in search results for my professional information.

The story behind Vizify

Shortly after publishing my page, I received an email from Vizify.com inviting me to phone one of the executive team with any questions.

I called, left a message, and got a call-back from CEO Todd Silverstein. We talked about how he, Eli Tucker and Jeff Cutler-Stamm developed the Vizify service and where they hope to go with it.

“Online identity is becoming increasingly important,” Todd said. “We felt that the tools for self-presentation that are available could be much better. Your LinkedIn profile looks the same as everyone else’s — we wanted to open it up, to help people express all facets of themselves.”

What Vizify offers is a striking graphic design, in a retro flavor, that the user can customize by choosing a color palette and then adding content — text, links, and photos. In essence it’s a slide show: The first page is a visual table of contents. A visitor can click through from any element on the contents page to read a quote, see academic history, see online profile links, or find out what you’ve been Tweeting about. Or a visitor can browse through your whole Vizify slide show.

While the choices are, on first glance, limited, Todd said that creative users are already stretching the boundaries of what can be done. They hide types of pages they don’t need, and they make multiples of other types of pages, such as interesting statistics.

“People are hacking the design,” he said. “We’ve had people put up, instead of photos, QR codes. People are using screen captures of longer pieces of text.”

While working on the Vizify design, the team discovered the people like seeing bits of information, each representing key areas about an individual. Todd calls it “the cocktail party effect.”

“At a party, you go from topic to topic until you find something, some shared interest that activates a conversation,” he said. “Part of what we’re trying to do with the Vizify design is bring those interesting aspects to the top to promote that moment of interaction.”

Less than a month old, Vizify has attracted notice from Mashable, TechCrunch, and from mainstream media such as CBS MoneyWatch. It’s been called a “personal landing page,” an “online business card,” and a “graphical bio.”

The next steps, according to Todd, include the rollout of tools to enable the display of more complex portfolios of content — capabilities that will enable Vizify to sell premium plans (the current service is free).

If less is more, will bigger be better?

I’m a big fan of Vizify and look forward to experimenting with the current capabilities. It will be interesting to see how it fares as it adds more features.

What makes it particularly wonderful now is that it pretty much forces people to lead with interesting high points (facts, quotes, hot topics) while discouraging the sort of jargon-clogged, mission-statement banalities that deaden so many online resumes and Linkedin profiles.

If given the chance to use more features, will people be able to resist the temptation to turn their Vizify profiles from intriguing introductions to boring brag books? I sure hope so. Vizify is solving a lot of communications problems for me, and I’m hoping it will become the new standard for professional online identity.

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What I’ve been listening to and reading:

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A problem

The solution

The story behind Vizify

If less is more, will bigger be better?

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