Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

Since I began sub­scrib­ing to RSS feeds, Google Reader has been my orga­ni­za­tional tool of choice. I have also used Safari and Mail and fol­low some feeds with iGoogle, but as the vol­ume of blogs began to grow I set­tled on Reader. At first, I used it as a blog bucket but soon I needed to get orga­nized and dug in a lit­tle deeper. The inter­face seemed a bit stark until I got under the hood and began to explore the ‘Man­age Sub­scrip­tions’ option. Google Reader allows you to cre­ate mul­ti­ple fold­ers to orga­nize your feeds. I fol­low a diverse range of blogs and Twit­ter searches so this has been really help­ful. You can cre­ate fold­ers on the Man­age Sub­scrip­tions page or while view­ing an indi­vid­ual blog sum­mary. The ‘Feed Set­ting’ drop-down menu allows you to assign a spe­cific blog to exist­ing fold­ers or add a new one. Reader Play pro­vides a slideshow view of blog abstracts (by feed or folder) and allows you to eas­ily ‘star’ favorite items. Using Twit­ter Search feeds… One pow­er­ful, free, online lis­ten­ing tool that is often over­looked is the advanced search page avail­able at: search.twitter.com. With Twit­ter Search you can drill down and dis­cover what peo­ple are talk­ing about based on mul­ti­ple key­words, loca­tion, date, etc. When you develop searches that are use­ful, sub­scribe to the RSS feeds with Google Reader just like a blog. Why should I care? Fol­low­ing and orga­niz­ing blogs and online searches is a very pow­er­ful method for dis­cov­er­ing new con­tent, par­tic­i­pat­ing in online con­ver­sa­tions, stay­ing in…

When it comes to Social Media every­one is in the pub­lish­ing busi­ness. Blogs and Face­book Pages are forums for com­mu­nity build­ing. Occa­sional self-promotion is alright, but your fol­low­ers will not keep com­ing back unless you pro­vide fresh, valu­able con­tent that encour­ages con­ver­sa­tion. Think like a mag­a­zine… With social com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools you and your com­pany can develop an inter­ac­tive, engag­ing, online mag­a­zine that will attract fol­low­ers and strengthen your cred­i­bil­ity and brand. Sounds great, right? Before you jump in, think about what this means. If you don’t have a plan to main­tain your pres­ence daily (or at least sev­eral times a week), your fans will lose inter­est. Stay away from self-promotion… Look at your favorite mag­a­zines. You may see a few dis­crete appeals for sub­scrip­tions (and that card that always falls out on the floor), but what com­pels you to read them is the con­tent. The focus is on the reader, not the pub­li­ca­tion. Many bands use their Face­book Pages solely as a bill­board to announce upcom­ing gigs, post new songs, reviews, and gen­er­ally talk about them­selves. If I’m a fan of a com­pany or artist, I already know I like what they do. There is no rea­son to reg­u­larly return to their Face­book Page if it doesn’t offer any­thing new. Con­sis­tency breeds loy­alty… If The New Yorker skipped a cou­ple of issues or was sud­denly miss­ing columns they would lose read­ers fast. Face­book Pages and blogs require the same con­sis­tent com­mit­ment to pub­lish­ing con­tent. Reach the right audi­ence… A good mag­a­zine brings you unique, tar­geted content…

The social web often seems like a huge cock­tail party where every­one is shout­ing and no one is lis­ten­ing. We all want to be found, and fol­lowed, and heard. How can we make real con­nec­tions that lead to offline friend­ships and busi­ness rela­tion­ships? Lis­ten­ing with gen­uine inter­est is the key to engag­ing peo­ple. Like any­thing else, devel­op­ing this skill requires a great deal of prac­tice. Plat­forms like blogs, Twit­ter and Face­book are not well suited for broad­cast com­mu­ni­ca­tions. If you are not pay­ing atten­tion when a post appears, it’s gone. I am exper­i­ment­ing with ask­ing ques­tions in var­i­ous ways. I am dig­ging into Twit­ter Search to find inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions and engage peo­ple with @replies and ques­tions. Face­book feels more con­stric­tive to me. I am try­ing dif­fer­ent ways to con­verse, explor­ing groups and Pages. Some peo­ple like gui­tarist Ken Rosser, have a knack for using Face­book con­ver­sa­tion­ally. He is always inter­est­ing, and each post seems to result in an active con­ver­sa­tion. How are you using social com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools to really lis­ten? What’s work­ing for you?