Well, it went off with almost no glitches. All of my linked profiles were updated with the exception of the Vestor Logic Fan Page. Posterous did however autopost to my Facebook profile but it took over an hour for it to show up. Better late than never.
I removed the Facebook Fan Page and re-linked it. This post will tell us if it worked this time!Customizing the autopost feature on Posterous
September 8, 2009 by
Great feature on Posterous! If you've never used Posterous, you should take a look. It is a blog platform that allows you to post by email but comes with a few key features for those users that are active on many platforms. The most interesting of these features is the autopost feature that allows you to post to Posterous and have it autopost to all of your other profiles.
I have used Ping.fm for clients in the past to auto-post to other social profiles, but it doesn't compare to the easy of use on Posterous. It took less than 10 minutes to add my accounts and I didn't have any snags with Facebook. Ping.fm took me weeks to get both the personal profile and Fan Page integrated and a few days later one would work and the other would not. This is the first post to test how it propagates across all of my profiles. I will follow up with a second post to share the findings. Fingers crossed!
Less is more, more or less
September 8, 2009 by
It’s hard for many people, yours truly included, to find an effective way to shorten an online message to something manageable. In person, I am a talker! Online, like many of my clients, I sometimes find it difficult to condense my thoughts into a short story.
So what is the best advice I can offer to anyone looking to get their feet wet with social media and do it effectively?
Keep it short, maybe to 500 words or less. Force yourself to make a well thought out point with an opening statement that frames the post for the reader so they can determine if they would like to read further. Then make your case with a few key arguments that support your initial statement.
Social media is about engagement more than anything else. In order to engage others, you need to be clear, concise and most of all interesting. Sure, this seems obvious, but visit a few random blogs and you may find just how many bloggers tend to be wordy and stray from their point. Readers are less likely to participate if you ramble on and on.
Present your story or pose a conversation-provoking question in a short format. Give your readers a chance to digest it with a clear vision for the conversation or topic and give them a clear opportunity to respond. Once the conversation starts the real topic will present itself. You never know where a story or question will lead. That’s the fun in blogging and micro-blogging.
So jump in and start to converse with people. You will meet new interesting folks that have something say, just like you.
How many words does it take to start a conversation? How long was your most commented on blog post? I want to know. Share your stories in the comments below.
This post = 310 words!
Photo courtesy of Procsilas
Social media success: Science or Personality?
September 2, 2009 by
.jpg)
What makes a person or company a run away success on the web, able to connect with tens of thousands of followers and fans? Is it the science behind their social media practices and the effective offline marketing efforts or is it the personality of the networker, a person that would make friends in any social setting whether it is online or offline? Can success be achieved with just one of these “assets”?
I think it requires both.
Personality
Social media poster boys like Chris Brogan, Steve Rubel and Jeremiah Owyang would all be successful in any business because of their online personalities. They’re likable, offer candid perspectives on the hot topic of the day and prompt many of their fans and followers to think harder, delve deeper and ask themselves the right questions to arrive a their own unique perspective. People like to listen in on their conversations, rally support on their behalf, even adopt their opinions as their own. Successful social media practitioners seem to have personality in common. People want to follow them. At it’s essence, I might argue that this personality is actually their voice. It may not be who they are away from the office so to speak, but it’s that consistent undertone to every post, each interaction, every action online. Their personality conveys a consistent voice.
Science
But what makes Chris, Steve and Jeremiah unique, outliers perhaps (as defined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, which is a great read and worth getting), is that they have mastered the ability to extent their reach with the social media tools available to them – the science of it all. They have crafted unique abilities to engage the right influencers, amplify their message across multiple social platforms and script their posts in such a way that most readers can’t resist jumping in on the conversation. Their daily habits have been revealed on their blogs, profile posts and even in the comments that they have made on other blogs. I would argue that they don’t really hold too many secrets. All three of them have been very quick to share tactics, advice and even words of caution with those of us that have followed. Having a defined voice is only the first part of the equation.
The message carries the punch. Chris, Steve and Jeremiah have the personality and have in their own way mastered the science of delivering their message. For this reason, I have personally benefited greatly from following each of them and enjoy reading about their muses each day. Perhaps the appropriate follow up post would be to explore how they define the message.
What do you think? Is success framed by the science or the personality? Both? Is there something else that I haven’t mentioned? I want to know.
A step backwards is progress?
August 20, 2009 by
.jpg)
Everyone one of us has done this. You get a fresh idea, usually late at night, and you fire off to the laptop to caputre it before it escapes you. I see it with my clients quite often. They reach that point where social media represents that magic elixir to spark sales and the clear strategy is to create profiles on every social media site they can find in a keyword search.
A day or two after they complete their “setup” phase it hits them…now what?
I encourage each of my clients to look to the strategy and goals first. Once they know what they want to achieve and have an idea of the big “how” they can start to focus on the minutae by defining tactics that will deliver them the desired results.
My real life example may seem familiar to a lot of people. I too set up every profile I could so that no one would beat me to the cool username or to at least make sure I wasn’t missing anything cool on this new service with 25 users. Then it hit me…”now what?”.
The Facebook – FriendFeed drama led me to my most recent review, a closer look at my social media footprint and some drastic slashing and burning. I cleaned out my bookmarks, reordered my browser’s link toolbar and unsubscribed from a plethora of feeds that have brought me little if any value since my last purge. I even moved a few profiles to the background of my daily life.
Taking a step backwards feels really good, great in fact. During the spring cleaning of my list of feeds I rediscovered a few old classics. I added a few new ones and not surprisingly, this morning found myself ready to dive in full steam.
Taking a step backwards brought clarity, a sense of accomplishment at 8:29am and I would argue a noted level of progress for today…and I am just getting started!
Have you cleaned out your social media closet lately? I’d like to hear your story.
The illustration courtesy of: everydaypants / CC BY 2.0
