Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

With all of the tweets and news stories going on around the newest web tool, Chat Roulette, I have to admit, I was curious. Although most of the conversation about the tool touted how awful it was, that every other person was behaving obscenely and it was a bored teenagers strange idea…I still wondered about it (darn that curiosity!). But, I hadn’t checked it out, I just simply didn’t have the time. I pushed it to the back of my mind, and kind of forgot about it.

Yesterday, me, my hubby, @vetlovingpetshb and @elecsecurityguy had brunch at Memphis in Santa Ana, and over unlimited mimosas and french toast, we got on the topic of weird tools and unique websites. Which of course, brought up Chat Roulette. We started talking about what we’d heard about it and what it was really like. None of us new more than the basic principal – go to the site, click play and wait to see who (or what) shows up. It was basically a video chat room, where you just clicked next to move onto another person/conversation. We had all heard that it was definitely nsfw, and that the majority of people on there were men, showing body parts that we had zero desire to see…but of course, after those mimosas, the curiosity came back and so we decided we just had to check it out (curiosity will getcha every time!).

The first tries to get the site to work completely failed…apparently Chat Roulette does not like Firefox. So, we switched over to Internet Explorer, got the ‘play’ button and took the chance. We clicked play, and waited. Three things we realized right away:

1. It auto turns on your own webcam which means the other person can see you laughing.
2. It auto turns on your microphone which means the other person can hear you laughing.
3. No one can prepare you for it, but you’ll definitely be laughing!

As all the news stories and tweets had told us, it was a strong mix of obscenity, with a few normal (albeit bored) people. We lasted about an hour on the site, clicking through about 15-20 different people, and had only one normal conversation, with a college kid in the UK who couldn’t sleep.

My final verdict? This site is a wreck, will end up the late night game at many sleepovers or drunken fraternity parties, and I doubt it will have any real staying power. That is unless they can figure out how to clean it up, segregate the types of conversations and turn it into a safer site for viewing…either way, I wouldn’t venture back.

Have you been to ChatRoulette? What did you discover?

Can you provide an answer to ALL of the following questions:

• What is your business strategy?
• What is your blog strategy?
• What is your twitter strategy?
• What is your facebook strategy?
• What is your branding strategy?
• What is your personal strategy?
• What is you financial strategy?
• What is your conversation strategy?
• What is your networking strategy?

If you can’t answer them, you need to take some time out of your schedule and come up with an answer. Without these answers, you don’t have a strategy. Without a strategy, you have nothing.

What say you?

Picasso once said that Good artists copy, great artists steal…

So I am “stealing” @IkePigott’s video in regards to the new Facebook page changes, because well, he says it better than I could…and he already did the work

I’m thinking it would be good to be Caligula in this situation…

The final post topic I gathered from my readers and followers was from Angry Julie (the first two were from @HealthOC and @Hagre). She is convinced the world is dominated by bloggers and wanted to know my thoughts.

I think I agree! Why you ask?

Let’s start by looking at the sheer statistics (stats from Techcrunch, Technorati, comScore and FutureBuzz):

• 133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
• 346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs
• 900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period
• 1,750,000 – number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)
• 77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs
• 81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere
• 59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years

Need more convincing? Let’s look at the State of the Blogosphere and who these bloggers really are:

• Two-thirds are male
• 60% are 18-44
• The majority are more affluent and educated than the general population
• 75% have college degrees
• 40% have graduate degrees
• One in three has an annual household income of $75K+
• One in four has an annual household income of $100K+
• More than half are married
• More than half are parents

If all the facts aren’t working for you, let’s look at facebook and twitter for a minute. Think about tweets, status updates and timelines…how many links do you see on a daily basis? How many of those sites are run on a blog platform? If you said “almost all”, you’re right. It is rare to see links to “websites” any longer, even if you are referring someone to a product, you tend to send them articles (blogs) vs static sites (websites).

But, it’s not just the sheer volume of blogs anymore, it’s the volume of the voices. People blog about products, whether they like them or not. For example, when the new iPad hit last week, there were articles everywhere about it…and the majority of those articles were written on blogs! Who does the iPad need to impress? Those bloggers! What about something non techie, like a new food item? Doesn’t need to worry about bloggers right? Wrong. According to Technorati, there are over 33,000 blogs dedicated to just food (and the statistics are the same for almost all genres). Bloggers are the new journalists. They can write from anywhere, say (almost) anything about you, and are easily accessible. And if the blogger is popular? Their blogs can often outrank the “normal” articles on any given topic!

But of course, this is just what I see.

What do you think? Are bloggers running the world?

I often have topics I think I should cover, but sometimes I like to relinquish control and give it to my readers instead. So, last week, I asked my friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter to share some topics they would like to see me cover on my site. I got some incredible ideas, and this first post is courtesy of @healthOC! She asked me to share how the market has affected my business, and others in my industry.

To start, if you are a new reader to this blog, you probably wondered how my business actually got started. Well, my business is actually a product of the horrible economy. In early 2009, I was working for a company as their marketing manager, overseeing 4 different smaller businesses. Wright Creativity was just a blog, I shared my ideas and business creativity. I had a few people I had helped with blog management, but it was very small, and my prices were very low. I was doing it more for fun than for business. But then, the economy hit the company I was with, and I was looking down the barrel of unemployment. It was that point that I decided I no longer was happy working for others and took the *huge* leap to become my own boss. Because I was a small business, just starting, my pricing was much lower than those who were set in the industry. I worked like crazy, and made every single minute count. This hard work and lower pricing helped me to get clients who needed help but couldn’t afford the big firms with the market problems. In addition to keeping me busy in the beginning, it allowed me to build a strong portfolio, great referrals and so now, when the market has started turning around, I am able to bring my pricing up to market level and still have all the clients I need. The economy downturn turned my blog into a business. I am thankful every day that the market took a downturn, and am hoping every day that it continues to go back up!

As far as other companies, I have chatted with quite a few people about the economy, and there seems to be two responses. Those who are active in social media, blogging and participate with their community are still finding success in their industry. They were able to take on smaller projects to subsidize their income from the big clients lowering the amount of help they needed. They could find new clients less expensively, and could create a network of referrals. The other group? Those who are sticking with traditional marketing on the other hand, seem to be struggling a bit more to keep themselves busy. These are the companies that only take on the large projects, and the ones that are feeling the heat when the large corporates cut their marketing budgets to almost nothing. I think that everyone can do well even if the economy is down, it just requires changing the way you work to fit the way that others need you. People need small help, and companies who can take on the small work will be better off in the end. If you can be there now, they will call on you when they can afford large projects.

Unfortunately, even after listing 10 great topics that any blogger can use last week, I still didn’t feel motivated today (what? I’m not perfect!). So, I decided to ask for some help from my friends and posted the above status update to facebook and twitter. Thank goodness for great friends, because in just 10 minutes I had the following great ideas! And now, I have some awesome ideas for next week

Ideas from Twitter:

@ParagonMoon: Blog topic: I can get over having done something I shouldn’t have. But to pass by opportunities is deeply regrettable and soul-damaging.

@Hagre: do a how-to of something you’re good at, or go explore someplace new and write about it! Just a couple thoughts!

@Sn0wSurF3r gave me two: How about, “you don’t have to blog just for the sake of blogging?” OR I want 2 read about how people should use lawyers at the beginning of contracts so they don’t need them after things go south

@influxx: take a break and come back fresh tomorrow. Dont force it. It will show.

@healthOC: I want to read about how the market has positively or negatively affected your business and/or others in your field

Ideas from Facebook:

What ideas do you have to add to the mix? What would you like to see me write about?

A recent article from Vanity Fair: America’s Tweethearts proves how little they actually understand twitter!

Thanks to @markdavidson, I discovered and read the story. Pretty soon, many of us were in conversation about the missteps and failings of the article.

Mark believes that it capitalizes on female stereotypes and paints these intelligent women as objects.

Joe mentioned that the people they chose were not a representation of real twitter elite.

Jason commented the entire article comes off as patronizing and is bothered that people find it interesting.

EricaJoy added a few others that should have been considered – and the fact that as it stood, it was crap.

While I agree with the points they made, I have a few of my own:

1. I believe that the article paints a poor picture of twitter and really fails to capture the point of the tool. Twitter isn’t about followers, it isn’t about popularity, and apart from @juliaroy, the key women in this article are very poor examples of twitter users. They all have 40k+ followers but follow, on average, less than 10% of them back! That means they are not conversing, not sharing and definitely not participating with their followers. Pathetic, and not the way twitter should be used.
2. The other “twilebrities” it mentions – Obama, Britney, Ashton – are just as bad as examples! None of these people will ever be asked how to use twitter to improve your business, they will never speak at a conference about combining twitter into a social media strategy. The people that do get asked those questions? And do speak at the conferences? THOSE are the “twilebrities”
3. This line from the article “Twitter doesn’t even require real sentences, only a continual patter of excessively declarative and abbreviated palaver” really twisted me…Twitter does require real sentences, real thought and real participation. If what you are doing is declarative and abbreviated palaver (which is really just big words for a short statement of unimportance) then you really are failing at twitter. And, the fact that Vanity Fair thinks that’s what twitter is – proves they have absolutely no idea how it really works.
4. And the last reason I know that Vanity Fair fails at twitter? Their account is run the same way…48k+ followers, only following about 300. How is that participation?

What do you think of the article?

Today, @MiaChambers posted a link to twitter about ghost tweeting, asking for our thought on whether it was right or wrong. Most responders were quick to say that they thought ghost tweeting was wrong in all areas – but I disagree.

I believe that ghost tweeting for an individual would be wrong, but a ghost tweeter for a brand is completely acceptable (and is commonplace).

For example, if @scottmonty had a ghost tweeter and didn’t tell us, that would be misleading. However if @Ford hired their marketing company to manage twitter for them, that would be perfectly acceptable as we don’t expect it’s the ghost of Henry Ford behind that account.

What say you?

All I want for Christmas is…some new blogs to read!

Want to help?

First, suggest 1 blog that you love to read that is not a mainstream/big name bloggers blog (ie: don’t suggest Chris Brogan, Copyblogger, Guy Kawasaki, etc).

Secondly, add the name of your own blog as well, so I can check it out too (if I haven’t).

Finally, check out some of the blogs that everyone suggests (this is a gift for them, not me).

Let’s hope Santa Get’s my list…

Improving your social media and blog management strategies means time, effort and a lot of work. But, in order to make it a little easier, I have picked 12 posts (one from each month this year) that discuss different areas of improvement.

January – How to be better in social media (it takes more than just participation.)
February – 7 ways to stay strong in your writing (writing takes strength, do you have it?)
March – Contemplating a site redesign (if you like your blog, you’ll write more!)
April – Creating a backlog of content (you’ll always have something to write about.)
May – Simple mistakes to avoid in social media (these can really save you!)
June – How to get yourself out of a comment rut (we all have them, no matter the content.)
July – 5 emails you need to write today (these can change the way you relate with your contacts!)
August – What makes words so important (A different type of post – more questioning, less tips)
September – The blog management puzzle (handle these 5 pieces, and you’ll notice a huge change.)
October – Social media friends vs real life friends (they can be the same thing…)
November – Creativity through the years (it was a month long series…)
December – What do you monitor daily (make sure you stay on top of it!)

Which post helped you? Which other topics would you like more about in 2010?