Posts tagged as:

Social Media

Teaching Social Media

by Daria Steigman on May 20, 2013

Upside Down Sign: Do Not EnterWe’re teaching social media all wrong.

We focus on how to use these platforms for business. We teach employees how to upload and tag pictures on Google+ from their association’s annual meeting or how to post a status update on Facebook about all the cool places customers have been spotted with the company’s latest gadget. We provide tips on how to write engaging blog posts. We discuss video best practices.

Now you’re probably thinking: Isn’t this what we’re supposed to do? Of course it is. You can’t be a social brand if you’re not using social media for business purposes. And you certainly can’t evolve into a social business if you’re not social brand savvy.

This is the endgame.

I was speaking recently about social media at a meeting of Washington Union Women and the question arose about how to get members to be more active social media users. That’s when it hit me.

Forget the business case. First we need to make people comfortable using social media.

A lot of people are using some form of social media, but it’s all about the degree of use and their perceptions of their own proficiency and the size of the audience they are reaching.

It took me two days to push the switch on my first Web site. I had read it and reread it, and had my favorite editors (aka, my parents) read it and reread it. I had friends proof it. I was so aware that once it went live everyone, everywhere could see the site that I thought it had to be perfect before I could make a move.

A lot of people (most?) have this reaction. So why are we surprised that there’s a barrier when it comes to social media?

We need to put social media in a context where people feel comfortable. Teach seniors how to post pictures of their grandchildren on Facebook. Teach parents how to text with their teenage kids. Teach people to use medical apps or nutrition apps or parking meter apps.

Once people are comfortable using these tools for themselves, then they won’t be so afraid of “making a mistake” in the business setting. Because who hasn’t uploaded a photo upside down or been grateful for an “edit text” feature?

Photo by Nick Farr (Flickr).

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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When the Twitterverse Strikes Back

by Daria Steigman on April 18, 2013

 

The day after the Boston bombings, PBS NewsHour held a terrific conversation (transcript here) around the role of social media in spreading news and connecting people. While the host kept trying to talk about misinformation, the two guests pointed out that most people were trying to verify information before posting and tweeting–or sharing and retweeting.

Or, as Howard Kurtz put it:

“Twitter spanked the news organizations that went off the rails.”

If the New York Post got a spanking, CNN got a flogging–and it was well deserved.

The social-verse is growing up.

It’s been fascinating to watch the evolution of citizen journalism in the digital age. This week, it appears to have taken another leap forward. Not because we’re calling out news organizations, but because we’re collectively more aware than ever of how these platforms amplify everything.

What’s your takeaway from the media and social media coverage?

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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Goodbye Reader, Hello Feedly

by Daria Steigman on April 2, 2013

Feedly home pageApparently no one uses Google Reader.

No one, except me (and a whole bunch of other people too). As a voracious consumer of online content (I subscribe to over 100 blogs), nothing beats the opportunity to aggregate it all, on demand, in one place.

You might have heard that Google is shuttering its RSS aggregator on July 1. The collective angst on Google +, Twitter, and Facebook lasted maybe 10 minutes.

The cool thing about a groundswell, even a groundswell of hand-wringing, is that it’s really about what comes next. In this case, Feedly.

Feedly is Google Reader after a makeover.

Feedly offers both a traditional “print style” view and more visual ways to arrange, sort, and read posts. Right now, you can pull in your feeds directly from Reader–folders and tags intact. The company has also beefed up capacity to handle the increase in traffic and posted information for new users coming from Google. They’re also working on a way to import everyone’s RSS feeds permanently when Reader shuts down.

If you read this blog and others via RSS instead of e-mail, you might want to give Feedly a try.

How do you read blogs? On the site, via e-mail, or via RSS?

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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What is an “Influencer”?

by Daria Steigman on March 7, 2013

Cut the Crap: Badges Don't CountLet’s clear something up: Influence is important. Badges, numbers, and algorithms are not.

I deleted my Klout account because people’s perceptions of my value shouldn’t rise or fall depending on whether I’m talking to an “online rock star” with thousands of Twitter followers or someone with a handful of them.

Social proof is an interesting concept. Mark Schaefer wrote a thought-provoking post yesterday asking whether people have to cheat to be successful online. My response: It depends on how you define success.

I don’t get validation from strangers.

I also replied:

I’m not sure that I’d use the word “cheating” so much as “gaming” (the system). Now I say that as someone who opted out of Klout, has never cared about numbers, and measures myself against myself and not what others are doing. I find all this gaming (or cheating) the system icky–but it’s a useful way for me to identify who I want to associate with and who I’m staying a mile away from.

Trust trumps badges and numbers every day.

My friend Shonali Burke pointed out in remarks at xPotomac recently that the people who move the needle most often don’t show up in any rankings. What they have? The trust of their online communities.

It’s all about context.

I was reminded of this again because a colleague asked me to weigh in on his search for the “biggest digital DC influencers.” This happened on a day that I was fascinated by a rare Senate filibuster and tweeted a few times on the topic. So who influenced me then? People who were talking about Rand Paul. (And “influenced by people who were talking about Rand Paul” is not a sentence I ever thought I’d write.) But if you factor those tweets and the people who amplified that content into an algorithm you’re going to make me influential on something that has nothing to do with me.

Someone at xPotomac said that “social scoring is the lazy man’s version of marketing.”

Who you know will always matter, but how that matters will depend on context and trust–not badges and numbers. 

Photo by cdrummbks (Flickr). 

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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Cornerstones and Cobblestones

by Daria Steigman on March 4, 2013

CobblestonesI learned about propinquity at the Solo PR Summit.

Okay, to be fair, the concept isn’t new–but I would have been hard-pressed to define the word itself. Propinquity means nearness, but it’s really about the relationship between proximity and relationships. Or, as Tom Martin put it:

See me. Know me. Like me. Hire me.

This lies at the heart of a good content strategy.

In a session entitled Painless Prospecting, Martin talked about strategies for becoming and staying top of mind with potential buyers of your products and services. One element of that is designing your Web site to funnel prospects where you want them to go. (That’s a topic for a different post.) Another element: having lots of quality content to educate people and to showcase your smarts.

You need to create cornerstones and cobblestones.

Martin pointed out that most content creators focus on cobblestones–blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other “one off” pieces to feed the content machine.  But if you start with a “cornerstone” big idea instead, you can then chunk it into blog posts, videos, presentations, podcasts, and the like to feed your content needs. Then you can go back and reverse engineer the “cobblestones” into a white paper, an ebook and/or a conference presentation.

I love “duh” moments.

My content strategy has always included some cornerstones because I plotted the strategy a long way back: business column, then blog, then early social media use.  The column provided evergreen content for the blog, and the blog provided an anchor for my early forays into social media. But as the demands for new content grew (and the business of running a business interrupted), it became easier to just focus on cobblestones. Now it’s time to get back to cornerstones, and my brain is already working on a couple of ideas.

Your turn: Are you creating cobblestones or cornerstones?

Photo by Bri Weldon (Flickr).

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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