Why Facebook Photos Look so Bad, and the DIY Solution to Fix It: "With the largest public repository of photos on the Web, it’s not surprising that Facebook has and continues to employ heavy compression to all of the 250 billion images they store. Facebook never intended to be a high quality archiving service of photos, but rather, photos act as social glue for the social media giant.
But seriously, why do your photos look so bad?"
'via Blog this'
Tips, tricks, ticks, and other stuff involving the creative process, technology, social media, and whatever else seems to fit in!
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Saturday, May 12, 2012
An interesting conversation about social media
Pepsi Digital Exec: Google 'Messed Up' With Google+, Instagram Is 'Phenomenal':
Was Instagram worth $1 billion? Will Google+ ever compete or beat Facebook?
Shiv Singh, global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages and author of Social Media Marketing for Dummies, shared his thoughts on those trendy questions and more during his recent visit to Mashable to unveil Pepsi’s new celebrity-infused “Live for Now” global ad campaign and “Pulse” digital dashboard.
In a 10-minute interview with Mashable‘s editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff, Singh commented about the launch ofGoogle+, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, avoiding digital marketing mistakes, establishing a brand voice and creating a Twitter list for “regular people.”
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Sunday, March 18, 2012
Marketing on Pinterest
Well, I am slowing down, not completely stopping! Getting these long infographics to appear properly is a pain in the tush, but click through… It is worth a glance.
Actually, full disclosure, while I may not be worrying about marketing my RubbleSites for the time being, I am going to be helping the ex one with some on-line marketing projects of her own. After watching her wallowing in some semi-legitimate, shark infested pools of online marketing slime for a while, I’ve decided to take a little time to help her get on a proper track.
Pinterest is going to be right out there on the front line of our strategy.
Now, I very much agree that Pinterest is a great way to generate brand attention for small startups, but the real question I have, it is going to be a source of sales?
Even this graphic spends more time talking about potential future customers than actual customers.
I think the answer is: Time will tell.
How Pinterest Can Get Your Brand Attention [INFOGRAPHIC]:
While shaping your brand’s image on Pinterest, remember to take into account the specifics of the site’s userbase. A recent study showed that home, arts and crafts, style/fashion and food are the most popular categories on Pinterest. The food category is the fastest growing segment of Pinterest.
Source: mashable.com via Aaron on Pinterest
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Saturday, March 17, 2012
How I learned to stop worrying and to ignore my statistics: The evolution & extinction of my online marketing strategy…
A little bit of navel gazing this morning… It is early and I am not feeling well, so this might wander and ramble a bit. You’ve been warned.
No More Stats (For now)
First of all, I am, for the time being, not going to be posting my statistics here any more. Those posts were mostly for my own benefit and I find that I am not interested enough (for now) to invest the time it takes to collect that data every month. This has a lot to do with my evolving philosophy about my blog sites and my online activities in general.
Last fall, I was looking at the idea of trying to grow these sites quickly and to try to use them as a way to generate some income. This is no longer a primary goal of mine at this point in time, so those statistics are not as interesting to me right now.
Overall, growth has leveled off a bit the last couple months since growth has become a secondary goal to content creation.
However, that being said, I noticed it has almost been a month since I posted here. That is too long. It is not that I have forgotten about this blog; I haven’t. It is not that I am giving up on this blog; I am not.
Tech Blogging (Or the lack of it)
I suppose one of the reasons why posts have been few and far between here actually goes back to the creation of this blog. I, originally, was going to post about tech and social media topics on my Suburban Eschatology Part Two blog, where my general posts about life live. I did not think that I would be posting often enough on these topics to justify a dedicated blog. A tech blog was not part of my original online strategy at all.
However, a couple months back, I realized that I had so many posts going up about tech and new media that the SE2 blog was looking a lot like a tech blog, which is not what I wanted for that particular piece of online real estate. So I created this blog.
This is not to say that I am regretting that decision. I feel that I do have enough to say and share to justify the existence of this blog but, realistically, it is not ever going to get the attention from me that my other sites receive. I started this blog during a period when I was posting a little more often than usual about tech issues, so I may have misled myself about the frequency of posts that I should be expecting here but, more than that, my philosophy about the content of my blog posts has evolved a bit.
Since creating this blog, my approach to blogging has changed, with my blogs now being my primary forum for content creation and with various social and microblogging venues being the focus of content curation.
I am still interested in tech and social media topics, but I am not writing that much about these topic at the moment. Mostly I am sharing links, and those posts are appearing under the All My Base Belong To You banners on Snip.it (http://snip.it/collections/6911-All-My-Base-Belong-To-You-Tech--New-Media), Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/aflitt/all-my-base-belong-to-you-tech-new-media/), and LinkedIn, but I generally have little commentary to add, so those links are not being posted here.
New hows, whys, and wheres of posting
Posting to one of my blogs requires a greater time commitment than throwing links up onto social media or microblogging sites, and my blogs are not the best venue for posts that are nothing more than shared links.
Unless I have something to add, or unless the link is something that I really want cataloged for later retrieval using the more sophisticated tagging and searching functions of the blog, I see no need to take the time to post them to my blogs. These types of posts usually (usually, but not always) involve links to videos, and with the topics I want to focus on with this blog, there are usually not a lot of related videos out there. The recent video on Rubble of the history of the moon falls into this category of post. It is not my content, but it is very cool and something I will want to be able to easily locate years from now.
For the most part, this approach effects my tech posts the most. This is not because I have nothing to say about the tech and social media links I post, but because I have a lot to say. More than a few words. But each link usually only touches on one small element of the topics that I am thinking about at any one time, so I share them through the microblogs and social networks and then sketch out big posts to work on later for this site.
And I have a few of those posts in the works, drafts in various stages of completion that will see the light of day over the next month or two. But these longer posts, because of the time commitment involved, are few and far between. Even if I write one longer, substantive post a week, that means, if distributed equally between all my blogs, that only one a month is going to land here.
I suppose this is a clunky way of sketching out and describing my evolving social media strategy in general.
Basically, I want my blogs to focus on content creation, not curation. This does not mean that I will not share material created by others on these sites, but that I want the majority of the posts to primarily feature content that I have created myself. At the very least, when I do post links to other people’s material, I want to contribute a few original words to the post. Some observation or commentary.
These are not strict rules, but they are guidelines that I am trying to follow for the most part.
Also, on Retrovirus Lab, this policy does not strictly apply, since it runs contrary to using that blog as a forum for sharing music I like or find interesting for some reason.
Of course, fewer, more personal posts means slower growth on these blogs, but growth is becoming a secondary goal of mine.
Evolving Social Media Priorities
Last fall, I noticed that I was getting a lot of hits for my content across the web and that two of the three blogs I had at the time were receiving a lot of traffic.
At the time, life was a little more complicated and frustrating. I was stuck between the need to get back to work and to make some money and the need to take more time at home to work with my special needs children and my disabled ex-wife. This was a lose / lose situation.
Finding that I was receiving over 20,000 hits a month for my content on the web suggested a new option - generating income via my websites. 20,000 hits a month seemed like a good starting point.
What I discovered over the next couple months was that, yes, those hit counts were a good starting point, but that is all. To really generate any useful income, it would take a lot of work, a lot of time, and a pretty serious revamping of my online footprint.
Sharing cool stuff and selling cool stuff is two very different things. Driving traffic to generate advertising revenue is something else entirely.
It became apparent that generating income would be possible, but there would be a lot of work involved, distracting me so much from my family’s needs that I might as well have been working outside of the home. I ran the flag up the pole for a couple months to see how the wind was blowing, but, all things considered, I found that it was just not a good fit for my life right now. It was not an efficient way to accomplish the current goals in my life. Better serving my needs would be focusing on using this online footprint as a portfolio to assist with the hunt for more traditional sources of income, otherwise known as getting a real job.
Since then, over the winter, the financial situation has improved a little and I am able to relax and to take a little more time working with my children, making sure that they will be prepared for the time when I have to give up my current role as a stay at home dad. This is good, because my family will be facing a lot of challenges over the next two or three months and the demands on my time for meeting everyone’s needs has never been greater.
I’ve already described, in general, how this has effected my approach to posting. But I must admit, I am still working a lot of the details out. My mind is a bit scattered when it comes to all of this stuff and I am still getting settled down into my new goals. Hell, I am still defining my new goals.
I suppose what it really boils down to is that I really want to be using what little free time I have over the next few months to really focus on personal projects of a more creative nature. On photography, video, and music. Maybe even some creative writing. I want to spend a lot less time on social networking and content curation.
I’ve been fighting a nasty cold the last couple weeks, and during this time I haven’t had the energy to use my free time for much other than “content curation,” though, which means sitting around for a couple hours here and there staring at the internet and sharing a few links to justify the time expenditure as being a “productive” use of time.
But this is not really how I want to be spending much time in the future. If my goal right now was to drive traffic, there would be more value to these activities, but since this is not my goal right now, these sessions leave me feeling hollow and empty. I sit and feel like I’ve been “working” for a couple hours, but then I look at what I’ve done and I feel like I have accomplished nothing.
I’d rather be working on music, writing stories, or editing photos or videos.
I think what I really want right now is to stop worrying about maintaining traffic and growth entirely.
I want to go back to the mental zone I was in last fall where my online activities were entirely self-centered. My posts were purely about entertaining myself, saving stuff I liked, and sharing stuff I worked on… Posting what I wanted, where I wanted, at what frequency I wanted without any concern about what others might think. Besides, that approach actually seemed to work very well. Traffic was growing.
This is not to say that these worries matter much to me right now either, but they do lurk more than I’d like in the back of my mind. I really do not worry much about what other people think when I post anything. What I worry about, though, is maintaining traffic. Making sure I am posting interesting enough content frequently enough to maintain interest in my boards on Snip.it and Pinterest, on my Facebook profile and pages, on my Twitter feeds…
Worrying about building traffic on this blog when I am only inspired to write here once a month or so…
This is what I am working on shaking right now, not worrying about these things. It is hard, though, to ramp down those considerations, but I need to.
Because, with my current content model, I am fighting a losing battle anyway.
In order to really drive growth and build readership, I would need to drop all but one or two of my blogs and focus all of my energies towards one topic. If I wanted to make any real money doing this, that would be the only real way to proceed.
But that would not be fun. I like writing about politics, but these sites are about recreation, not vocation, and, for fun, I like to write about a lot of different things. I like photography, but I also like writing about politics, and in order to really sell my photography online, I would not have any time left to blather on about the tragicomic antics of the GOP presidential contenders. I am fascinated by tech and new media issues, but spending more than a few hours a month on these issues starts feeling like work and not play very quickly…
So my goal for the next month or two, until I really gear back up into a job hunt, is to just have fun with these sites. If some task involving these sites starts feeling like a chore, I am probably not going to spend my free time working on it at this point in my life.
Life is full of unpleasant chores right now. My free time should be fun. And if I do not feel like posting out of some odd sense of necessity, I am not going to do it.
The result of this will be better and more interesting posts. More interesting links on the boards. Wittier comments on the social media sites. But less frequent posts all around.
No longer a blogger
I suppose a clear way of explaining my new intentions is this…
For several months, I was trying to be a blogger. To me, this means that I saw my blogs and social media sites as an end in and of themselves. That my end goal was the creation of content for these sites with the primary purpose of promoting these sites.
More clearly and specifically, this means I spent too much time doing things like writing a post on politics because I felt that it had been too long since I posted on Democracy In Distress, not because I was really interested in writing a post on politics at that particular time. I also have been spending too much time actively looking for interesting links for the boards and social networks instead of just throwing stuff up that I come across along the natural course of my day.
I am taking a break from those sorts of activities. For the next, indefinite period of time, I am just going to be a parent, photographer, writer, and musician who happens to also have a blog (or four).
And if people get bored and turn away from these sites, that is fine. I will be having fun and that is fulfilling enough for me right now. I am not going to be worrying about the wolulda, shoulda, couldas of running a successful online/social media marketing strategy with my sites at this point in my life. I don’t have the time or energy right now and, at the end of the day, I just don’t care enough right now.
Just because I can does not mean that I must take the time to do. But I can still write about how to do it from time to time, when it suits me. When it is fun.
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Monday, February 6, 2012
The Three “Ps” of Identity: Presentation, Protection, & Preference (plus a look at Facebook profiles vs. pages)
Allison Cerra writing on Brian Solis’ blog. I stole a decent chunk but the entire post is worth a read.
What’s Love Got to Do with It? The 3P’s of Identity - Brian Solis:
We visited with respondents in 30 homes across the country, observing them for hours in their natural habitats going about their ordinary day. We followed up with a quantitative study to more than 5,000 consumers across the US from teens to mid-lifers to isolate psychometrics, behaviors and values. Our goal was ambitious: How do the devices and networks connecting us each day affect our view of ourselves and those serving us?
…
To answer the question, we first had to understand how respondents view themselves in the networked world that keeps them connected. Through the research, we derived the 3P model of identity.
First, there’s presentation, which speaks to the image I attempt to reflect depending on my context. Before the days of devices connecting us in a 24×7 always-on world, life was simpler. Specifically, managing my image was simpler. My presentation at work may have been different from that at home, church, social gatherings or other venues. But, the networked community surrounding us demands a pervasive and constant reflection of who we are. And, I am no longer in control of how I appear, but anyone with an opportune cameraphone or texting fingers is capable of casting my image in the light they see fit.
Next, there’s protection, in which my worldview shapes what I choose to reveal or conceal about myself and loved ones. Protection-centric stories typically steal the headline of the day – whether it be in their scorn of companies that suffer security breaches or some other misstep in infringing customer privacy. Predictably, the public is fascinated with tales that expose how vulnerable we can be in the virtual world that surrounds us. Not all violations are created equal of course; an annoying spam message doesn’t carry the same consequence as a debilitating identity theft crime. In the protection realm, navigating the connected world requires an ability to discern innocuous from more harmful threats – despite not having our more primal, physical sensory capabilities to arm us in doing so.
Finally, preference is a psychological orientation toward targeted products, services and individuals. There is an abundance of choice in a hyper-connected world. Preference seekers long for the targeted offers or opportunities that appear just at precisely the moment they need them. Even better, these individuals crave personalized options that magically materialize even before a conscious need arises. In this space, the constellation of mouse clicks, channel changes and location updates presents a compelling view of who I actually am through my behaviors.
The 3 Ps exist in each of us simultaneously. While some of us may more psychometrically align with one P in particular, we make conscious and unconscious tradeoffs between all three multiple times each day. Should I post that picture about myself on my social networking page? It depends on how strongly I believe it aligns with a particular presentation important for the unique audience. Should I reveal my location to others through my social networking updates? It depends on how protective I am of leaking such information compared to how strongly I prefer a targeted interaction or service benefitting from the same. Should I opt-in to receive targeted advertisements? It depends on how certain I am that such personalized information will be used to help me, not harm me.
Another in a series of recent posts on Solis’ blog where he is presenting some very interesting metrics while not necessarily telling us how to apply them. However, the application is fairly obvious with most of them.
This one, obviously, is a way to look at both how we present ourselves and how we understand our customers. In my particular case, my customers are the readers of my blogs and my followers on social media. What is suggested to me, though, is that how we present ourselves via these Three Ps will determine which customers engage with our content. This is not a chicken and egg approach; here, A does come before B.
This is particularly interesting to me today. Today I am realigning how I present content on my Facebook profile and pages. Before, I used my personal profile as a portal to the content I created, and then threw a bunch of links and images into the mix as well. In many ways, this watered down my own content and much of it got lost in the torrent of information.
But this was not the only drawback. My two primary blogs are Rubble, which is primarily used to present my nature photography, and Democracy In Distress, which is primarily used to argue my political views. Because of this, most of the content on my Facebook profile was links to artistic articles, photos, and videos, and links to political content centered around a center-left viewpoint.
I think the problem is pretty clear.
There are not a lot of analytics available for personal profiles on Facebook. I am pretty sure that I lost few “friends” after posting a picture of Mt.Hood, but I know I lost “friends” after posting too many anti-Republican articles in a row, some disagreeing with my politics, some because they just did not want any politics in their feed at all. This was not the content they were interested in and my one or two photos a day were no match for the much more ubiquitous political postings when making a decision on whether or not to friend or un-friend me.
So I have a presentation issue affecting my online identity. In my case, somehow I ended up gaining a pretty solid following around the politics, most of my followers, “friends,” who were not people I actually knew in the real world, were there for the politics, not for the photography. My efforts in the artistic realm were being buried and lost in the flood of political material I was posting to keep the majority of my profile’s followers interested.
Presentation is not my only problem. Because I have been using my personal profile as more of a page than a profile, I also have a protection issue.
With a page, the goal is to get as many followers as possible. To get as many eyes on my content as possible. I do not need to or even want to know all of them personally. And with pages, this is fine. However, when following this practice with my personal profile, this creates some problems.
Between friends on Facebook, some layers of protection are eliminated since we are supposed to be responsible for those layers of protection ourselves, not the site itself. We are supposed to be vetting our friends, and once they get through our gate, they then have increased access to the profiles on our friends list. Of course, every user can tweak their setting controlling the amount of access these friends of friends have to their own profiles, but the default settings are pretty open.
These friends of friends also can send messages to the people on our lists. They can whether or not they are our friends, but with access to our lists they can also send messages such as, “Hey, since we both know that Litt guy, why don’t you check out my totally worthless spam and my potentially hazardous link? You know Litt wouldn’t lead you astray, right?”
No, I wouldn’t. Intentionally. Especially if I am using my profile correctly. However, using it as a page, while trying to vet most of my followers to some degree, some bad seeds do slip through since I am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to new contacts.
This happened to me recently, and it was the final factor leading up to the changes I am implementing today.
After a couple weeks of warning, I am moving the majority of the political content to a page for the Democracy In Distress blog. This is certain. I am, for now, also moving the photography to my new A. F. Litt page (as opposed to my personal profile). This way, those who do not care for the political content can enjoy the photography, and those who enjoy the politics can be spared the landscapes pictures, etc. if they wish.
It streamlines and clarifies my presentation, targets my specific followers better, and it creates a more secure environment for my existing friends while still allowing me to purse new, unvented followers.
Unfortunately, it is not a win-win scenario. In Game Theory, it is a non-zero sum scenario.
Overall, I may not lose any followers or friends, but I will, hopefully only for the short term, be sacrificing click throughs to my blogs and other online accounts. My Facebook profile is my second largest traffic source behind Google Search, with Snip.it and Pinterest coming in third.
By not posting these links on my profile, I could be reducing my traffic by quite a bit (not to mention killing my Klout score!), but I do not want to flood my friends’ feeds with multiple posts of identical links. Already, my most dedicated followers have “liked” the pages they are interested in, and hopefully, overtime, the new pages will build the following my profile has.
Because of this, these changes were not the easiest choices to make. There were some difficult decisions involved. But it is better to do this when I am approaching 600 followers instead of approaching 5000 followers.
If I could go back and do this all over again, I would have created these pages as soon as I revived the Rubble and Democracy In Distress sites last year. In the future, putting together a social media marketing campaign, there would be no question of this.
However, there was not a lot of planning going on last year as my blogs slowly came back to life. I was posting here and there for the fun of it and the idea that I would start getting the traffic on these blogs that I am never crossed my mind. By the time I realized that things were taking off I was just rolling with it. Only over the last few months have I sat down and tried to bring some order to the chaos.
The fact that I would need to migrate my content to pages was obvious then. The only question was when. Now, or wait until my friends list reached its upper limit? The protection factor was the deciding factor in making this change now. Also, I’ve seen too many people trapped with having to maintain identical content on two different pages/profiles – profile content for their first 5000 followers and page content for everyone who came along later.
Another trap I’ve noticed is accounts with 5000 friends on the profile and nine followers of the page.
By making this change now I hope to avoid both of those problems in the future.
Really, what I am doing on Facebook is no different that what I did with my blogs last year, I sorted the content by subject matter, knowing that some people would be interesting in certain topics more than others. While with the RubbleSites, this has led to five different blogs (Arts & Sciences, Music, Politics, Tech & New Media, and Family Life & Parenting), I am breaking these five down into three pages on Facebook: Music (Retrovirus Lab), Politics, and everything else, with the everything else being split between my personal Page and Profile depending on the content’s presentation and protection factors.
I will depart with humor. This was spotted by Kelly Rossi on Facebook earlier.
I like the last one. I still haven’t figured out why G+ is worth my time, other than maintaining some place holders just in case it takes off in the future.
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Friday, February 3, 2012
Facebook "Wall of Shame", a handy chart via Mashable
Note: Cross posted from Suburban Eschatology Part Two.
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Click on the article link above for the best view:
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Fun with everyone's favorite social network...
Facebook FAIL: Missteps and Shortcomings Revealed [INFOGRAPHIC]:
Facebook’s gone through some profound changes lately, which is exciting to us, but leaves others in a profound state of anger and frustration. Like it or not, all is not perfect with the world’s largest social network, and here’s an infographic by a company that’s more than happy to point out Facebook’s shortcomings.
The “Facebook Wall of Shame” was created by WordStream, Inc., a provider of search marketing software and services...
This hard-hitting infographic smackdown that reveals what WordStream calls “Facebook’s errors in judgment."
'via Blog this'
Click on the article link above for the best view:
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Facebook 101 [COMIC]
Note: Cross posted from Suburban Eschatology Part Two.
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There are some people who think Facebook has become too complicated. There are other people who agree with those people.
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Tips for landing a cherry tech position
Note: Cross posted from Suburban Eschatology Part Two.
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Created by: Masters Degree
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Found this on Mashable... I'd prefer to work in high tech manufacturing, my preferred area. But, I'll write for anyone! This chart is geared more towards the hard core programmers, not the English majors who happened to grow up and start their careers in Seattle, like me, and who, inevitably because of the time and place, landed in that industry off and on over the years. And it looks like moving north, south, or east from Oregon would be a good idea for landing one of these types of jobs.
Hot Tips For Landing Jobs at Google, Apple and Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]:Google, Apple and Facebook are the tech trifecta, so we found facts that could help you land a job at one of these companies. No doubt, there will be stiff competition: Nearly one in four young professionals wants to work at Google, for instance, but there’s more room in the Googleplex for software developers. Facebook gets 250,000 applications a year and sifts through them to find the cream of the crop, preferring those who build things, whether they’re apps or organizations. And Apple wants, well, Apple fanboys to help create the next generation of gadgetry, but you ought to have a reference from an existing Appler.
Created by: Masters Degree
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Yes, I am still anti-Facebook for kids...
Originally posted on Live Journal: Suburban Eschatology Part Two (September 12, 2011, 9:56 PM)
I am not a fan of kids on social media. Teens, sure, but under thirteen seems a bit much. My son would love a Facebook account, but I do not think he is ready. On top of this, he spent so much time on the computer over the last year, without access to any real social networking, that I had to take him into the doctor to have his carpal tunnel symptoms looked at this afternoon.
Anyway, here is yet another reason why kids and social networking services are a bad idea...
Apps, social networks pose new threat to kids By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY
There is a rising threat to kids who habituate the Internet: the likelihood that a popular mobile app or social-networking service will invade their privacy.
The Federal Trade Commission last month announced a $50,000 settlement with app maker W3 Innovations for collecting and dispersing information of kids under 13 in violation of the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act, or COPPA.
...
A recent survey by anti-virus firm AVG found roughly half of children ages 6 through 9 regularly interact with friends online, yet 58% of their parents admitted to not being knowledgeable about social networks.
...
"The risks to children from social networking at an early age are numerous," Lavy says. "As pedophiles become more technologically sophisticated, they're able to find and connect with kids easier than with previous methods."
More time spent online also means higher risk of children getting exposed to inappropriate content and advertising. Identity thieves target minors' names and Social Security numbers to create bogus credit accounts with a lower likelihood of getting discovered.
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Thursday, December 15, 2011
2011 State of the Blogosphere by Brian Solis
 |
| From 2011-12 (Dec) |
I hate that word, by the way… Really, with a deep passion.
Anyway, one of these days, when I have a chance, I’ve been working a bit on a piece with a similar theme. Not so much because it is the end of the year, but because of all of the changes to my on-line profile over the last couple of months.
I’ve been doing this blog thing off and on for a long time in many different formats, longer than the word blog has been in existence, and I will say this… With all of the different options out there, short form, long form, link oriented, picture oriented… The “blogosphere” is far more confusing, the social media landscape is far more cluttered, now than it ever was before.
But that is not entirely true.
It is also less confusing than ever before, if you are purely a consumer.
If you are one of the 90% that purely consumes content, is it really that confusing? No, you just find what you like and stick with it. More options means more opportunities to find a platform you like, increasing the chances that one becomes a regular consumer of social media.
And for the other 9% that fulfill the function of aggregators of information, sharing links and what not on Facebook, Twitter and what not, then I suspect, it is pretty much the same. You find what you like from sources you like and pretty much stick with it. The only real difference is that you take the next step and share what you find. Then people from the 90% who share your interests start following you.
Again, pretty simple.
But for the 1% focusing on the creation of content, or some mix of aggregation and creation (which is where I see myself), things are very confusing these days.
Unless you are already well established, where you are pretty much just looking at continuing with the core platform that established you in the first place and are looking merely to use the plethora of new social media formats (Facebook, Twitter, tumblr, Pintrest…) to augment and, perhaps, publicize or advertise your already successful site, page, blog, or profile, the emerging new choices offer some challenges, but those challenges are not “life or death.” They are about growth, not survival.
However, if you are new on the scene, or launching in a new direction, then where do you start with all of this? These are the challenges that I am currently facing, and this is why I find these sorts of articles so interesting right now.
I will conclude with the thought that finding the right balance and blend, the right peak in the social landscape on which to plant your flag, is life and death for any content creator in the current blogosphere. And with all the choices available these days, getting this right is not always easy.
I’ll save my breakdown of what I am doing and what I have learned for my article, which I am planning on finishing as soon as I actually finish building this site. For now, I’ll just throw up some excerpts from Solis’ article, focusing on the points that I find most relevant to my own experience the last few months.
Another note… Solis tends to draw a line between Social Media and Blogs. I am not sure I agree that they are two separate things, though I reserve the right to change my mind as I spend more time working on my analysis of the current state of Web 2.0.
The State of the Blogosphere 2011 - Brian Solis:
We are focused, against a different standard than that of five years ago, on what is important to us. If long-form content is shared within our interest graph and possesses relevant information that is true to our interests, it will be consumed. If it content, no matter how great its length, is true to who I am, I will share it. Not just because I want others to share in its relevance, but because doing so is a form of self-expression and the words of others can lend to a piece of the puzzle that completes me online and offline.
Over the years, blogs have formed the foundation of social media, democratizing the ability to publish thoughtful commentary, build a noteworthy community and equalize influence along the way.Blogs are underrated and largely underestimated. Not only are they platforms for self-expression, shared experiences and observations, they are becoming a live index of history in the making as told by people for the people. Each year, I take to my blog to share the state of the blogosphere based on the annual report published by Technorati. Going back to 2004, Technorati has documented how blogs have changed the landscape for information commerce to not only provide insight into the world of blogs and the bloggers whose voices we are growing to trust across a variety of topics, but also into the numbers behind their ascendance.
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…bloggers aren’t focused on any one property. Professionals will blog at as many as four properties. This is up from an average of two blogs noted in the 2010 report.
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In aggregate, most bloggers will spend anywhere between one-to-three hours blogging per week followed by three-to-five and five-to-10 weekly hours. 25% of professional bloggers are dedicating upwards of 40 hours or more per week.
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In terms of frequency, bloggers across the board will publish two-to-three posts per week. However, a notable percentage of professional, corporate, and entrepreneurial bloggers post once or twice per day.
Of those bloggers who are investing greater volumes of time and energy in blogs, it’s for good reason. It’s not just about pontification or sharing experiences in long-form. Bloggers can point to the ROI specifically…and it’s encouraging many to invest more in their blogging routines.
Most note that blogging has proven to be valuable for promoting their business or to one’s profession. Additionally, professional, casual, and corporate bloggers city audience engagement as motivation to create.
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As many as 40% of today’s professional and 35% of corporate bloggers once worked as a writer, reporter, producer, etc. in traditional media. The skillset is certainly optimized in terms of content creation. Learning social skills becomes critical for their continued success. On the corporate or entrepreneur fronts, the move to brand publishing or brand journalism as it’s often referenced, appears to be gaining momentum…
To help consolidate sources, I am also including some excerpts from Solis’ 2010 report…
The State of the Blogosphere 2010 - Brian Solis:
With the rise of Twitter, Posterous, Tumblr and other forms of micromedia, many believed that the glass was half empty. Blogging appeared passé as many individuals opted for microblogging, investing in the art of the short form. After all, the blogosphere at one point seemed to succumb to the allure of the statusphere and the effortlessness and trendiness of rapid-fire, micro publishing. But, something was lost in translation over the last few years…context.
Today, 100 million Tweets flew across Twitter.
On Facebook this month, the average user created 90 pieces of content and contributed to the more than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) collectively shared each month.
But blogging perseveres – as it should. It is a place where context, thoughtfulness and continuity are rewarded with inbound links, ReTweets, bookmarks, comments and Likes. Blogs are the digital library of our intellect, experience, and vision. Their longevity far outlasts the short-term memory of Twitter or any other micro network. In fact, with Twitter, we are simply competing for the moment. With blogs, we are investing in our digital legacy.
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Half of all bloggers who responded are currently working on their second blog. 81% have blogged for over two years. And for those who doubted the future of blogging, 96% have blogged for at least one year.
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Blogs form the basis for the formation of interest graphs, which, for all intents and purposes, represent the next stage of social networking. Close behind, a significant faction of bloggers use the platform to speak their mind as tied to areas of interest, specifically hobbyists, part-timers and the self-employed.
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Blogging without an audience is merely a public journal. Bloggers are sharing their soul for a greater cause…your attention, your actions, and ultimately, the prospect of circulation. As such, writing is not enough to build desired audiences and desired outcomes. 55% of bloggers, including me, list their blog on Technorati in the attempts to attract a greater array of visitors. As such, a significant number of bloggers use Technorati tags to help boost their posts and blog when visitors search keywords.In general, Social Media Optimization (SMO) remains underestimated. While it’s an extension of SEO, it is none the less as important as SEO…it’s traditional search vs. social search.
It’s also worth noting that no blog is an island. Even with RSS, bloggers take to Twitter and Facebook to help create bridges between social and interest graphs to related content. And, we can’t overlook the act of commenting on other blogs in the hopes for reciprocal traffic.
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2011 is the year of information curation and the dawn of the curator. Curators introduce a new role into the pyramid of Information Commerce. The traditional definition of curator is someone who is the keeper of a museum or other collection. In social media, a curator is the keeper of the interest graphs that are important to them. By discovering, organizing, and sharing relevant and interesting content from around the Web through their social streams of choice, curators invest in the integrity of their network as well as their relationships. Information becomes currency and the ability to recognize something of interest as well as package it in a compelling, consumable and also sharable format is an art. Curators earn greater social capital for their role in qualifying, filtering, and refining the content introduced to the streams that connect their interest graphs.
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Curators play an important role in the evolution of new media, the reach of information, and the social nicheworks that unite as a result. Curators promote interaction, collaboration, as well as enlightenment. More importantly, services that empower curators will also expand the topography for content creation. Forrester estimates that 70% of social media users are simply consumers, those who search and consume the content available today…but never say anything in public about it. However, the ease of curation combined with the pervasiveness of microblogging starts to entice consumers to share information, converting the static consumer into a productive curator or creator.
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