Purrfect Social Media

I love combinations of silliness and genuine insight. Here's a great example of that, once again from Social Media Today.

Chris Street compares cats to the best of social media. But what if we drew some other comparisons?

Dogs are always happy to see you -- can we infuse some of that positivity into our new media interaction? Old shoes are comfortable -- is our product so consistently good that people keep coming back to us, even when something else is more flashy? It just keeps going back to generating stellar content.

Listen and Speak

Social Media Today propagates social media "listening", meaning finding out who is saying something meaningful in your niche, and then backing them up by contributing your ideas only AFTER you've heard theirs.

Sounds great, but the niche of my music blog is saturated by people who are not doing a great job, and by people who are doing SUCH a great job that why should they care about little 'ol me?

That's why I'm going to connect this idea to another article, also from Social Media Today. Let's focus on the last heading: "You do have something to say." As a communication student, I am fascinated by how two people can convey the exact same message, but it takes on completely different meaning because of how they say it and the expectations of the listener -- who they are, really. Social media is no different. Someone else may want to talk about how you can login to Plain White Tees using Facebook, but no one is going to do it the same way I am. No one cares for the exact same reasons. Therefore, I have something unique and interesting to say.

Recognizing my own value as a contributer gives me the courage to seek other's contributions. Funny how that works, huh?

Whistle While You Blog

I'm a blogger. I'm not saying I'm good at it, but it's fun and I'm learning a lot.

By everything I've heard, step one in viable blogging is to have good content. Step two, then, is to drive traffic to your blog.

Chris Brogan offers a few thoughts on both of these topics. I admit, the first time I skimmed over this article, I found it unhelpful. "Yes," I thought, "keeping people interested is a good idea. But how do I GET them interested, silly man??"

The answer was right there in front of me, of course. Work.

That's it, really. If I want to get noticed, I have to put time, thought, and energy into creating viable content. Then, I have to put even MORE work into telling people about that content. Not to mention making sure I'm telling the right people. You know, my audience.

Cut the Fluff!

Chris Brogan is a smart man. Of course, I think anyone is pretty smart who tells me I'm trying to do too much with my time and I need to get back to the basics. (Take President Uchtdorf, for example!)

Brogan's article makes the point that there are a LOT of options when it comes to social media, but not all of them are very useful! It really just depends on what you are trying to do. Some things are great for personal use -- I'm a sucker for Facebook, as previously mentioned. But I prefer twitter to get professional information, whether it's the latest on bands I intend to write about or interesting things going on with freelance writing and social media.

I feel like Brogan has given me permission to slack off, to not feel pressured to be "in the know" on everything. Just to what actually works, and let everything else go. Told you he was a smart man.

Twitter Gets a Face Lift; We Get Confused

Twitter has been pestering me for the last couple of weeks about their new interface. I tried it out for about a day, but like most social media changes, I found it more annoying than helpful and switched back.

Well, the change is permanent now and I have to figure it out all over again. Fortunately, I'm not on my own. Social Media Today posted an article explaining  how to use the new interface. Bless them.

I admit, I do like that there's a lot less flipping between windows and tabs as I go find what a tweet was referencing. (Inline media, you know.) As for anything else, I don't think I use twitter enough -- or rather, in enough ways -- to really notice the difference. But maybe it will become more apparent in time? We'll see!

Facebook Don't Kill Relationships, People Kill Relationships

Social media is so easy that we can fill our lives with it. But "easy" doesn't always mean "good". To quote one of my favorite bands, "sometimes the hardest thing and the right things are the same."

This is something I've actually been pondering for a while, but a recent article on Social Media Today brought it to my attention once again. Basically the point of the article is that yes, social media can be distracting, But all by itself, it is NOT evil.

As a college student, I have friends that are simply too busy for me. However, every now and then I catch one of them on Facebook chat, and we end up having a delightful 15 minute conversation before he or she runs to do   the next homework assignment, or go to the next meeting. Without social media, our relationship would be strained to the point of breaking. On the other hand, as the Rev. Miller mentioned in the article points out, social media can be used inappropriately.

But by saying that it's Facebook's fault that your relationship with your husband sucks is like blaming obesity on the guy who thought up donuts. Donuts are almost as easily accessed as social media is. But no one is making you eat them.