SloMo is not to be confused with the currently very hot SoLoMo acronym.
So this past week during a social event in Marrakech, I met the charming @Michelle_Adams_ and a — by his own account — photographer, British, living in New York, that drinks tea fellow by the name of Patrick Cline, aka @PatrickCline_.
Within the time constraints of the event – a photo shoot at @PeacockPavilion for @LonnyMag – and during the rare breaks, we exchanged business cards and the traditional social platitudes.
Although it is still some people’s reality today — and this post is really for them,
Honestly, a list of top anything can be created out of thin air and include people or things deemed worthy based on multiple factors. Notwithstanding, I’m flattered to know that the dedication and time I put in, generating content through various online channels, proved valuable to others.
“Pride is the illusion of separation. Humility is the realization of unity.”
I couldn’t help but think of this proverb when I got the news about making the Who Are The Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers? list by Forbes. I mean this achievement is also in large part thanks to all that have listened and amplified my voice; and I feel so humbled for it. All the more, that there are so many great names on the list that I respect and enjoy.
In the end, this underlines for me that creating great value and engaging people on it can be a game changer on both the professional and personal levels.
On my way to Fayetteville, Arkansas (Yes, Arkansas), I check-in on foursquare at the San Diego Airport. A rather busy airport from a social media junkies standpoint: 41 people were already checked in when I did. Continue Reading…
Links are very useful and constitute the raison d’être of the internet. Problem is they look ugly, gibberish and often relay a spamy smell; especially on Facebook. Take a look at the picture below, how ugly is that?!
Additionally, but not that you specifically care, the above is a pet peeve of mine. Spammers aside, the time spent on finding good content to ultimately end up having it look ugly, makes me cringe. Doesn’t this one look better?
So here’s a quick video on how to properly post a link on Facebook. Take a look, there are two ways to post links on Facebook and you might actually learn a couple more tricks to make your posts, not only look better but, more attractive to be read and engage with. For those of you for whom this pulls out a “DUH!”; share along, you’d be surprised as to how many people have no clue.
Any story culminating in a group hug is always great. The path to Twitter ‘addiction’ is one of those stories.
Addiction to Twitter does actually often arrive at a group hug instead of getting caught at customs in a Bangkok airport with a stashed kilo of heroine. Yes, a hug as close to reality as a virtual group hug can get. That’s where Twitter can lead you.
The very talented Roba Al-Assi | @RobaAssi put together an excellent description of each stage leading up to a full on Twitter addiction. You can find the details on Roba’s blog cleverly titled “and far away“.
After watching one of these group hug stories, after the high is gone, do you ever wonder: Nice… Now what?
To be sure, group hugs sessions are fantastic but for a businesses looking to leverage Twitter, those alone will not keep the lights on.
But for those of you, wannabe social businesses, still hesitating to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, you might not be stuck at Roba’s Stage I, but you might be unsure as to what good might these emotional effusions do for your bottom line.
I’m not going to go down the endless list of benefits a well managed Twitter presence can do for businesses here and now, but here’s a hint to munch on: How much probability would a sales call or meeting have to succeed if it had been preceded by a hug?
Now although virtual, I’m not talking about a fake hug. I’m talking about a genuine connection built overtime, based on mutual knowledge of each party and a reach beyond strict business chatting. That’s the opportunity that Twitter is affording us all, regardless of distances, connections or time zones, the ability to virtually invite folks you want to do business with, to sit down and have the equivalent of a nice cup of hot tea, shoot the breeze and break the ice before talking business.
If you had all the time and money in the world, how good of an idea do you think it would be, to invite all your customers and prospects for a one on one chat over a cup of tea? … Now you can and much more.
Violence, media black out and watered down stories due to pressures from drug cartels and dozens of journalists murdered in Mexico; have caused many residents to turn to blogs and social media — such as YouTube and Twitter — for their news.
Front Page "The Epoch Times": http://the epochtimes.com
Blogging has won! It wasn’t killed but emboldened, by social media. The latter is alive, well and here to stay as are SEO and search engines: Not a simpler landscape to deal with. So what are businesses looking to use the web for growth to do? Three things: Create even better engaging content, feed it through social networks to engage their communities on it and… make sure that content loads super extra fast on their screen.
The Blog Is Alive! Long Live The Blog
Last week, AOL bought the technology blog TechCrunch for an undisclosed sum (estimated to be at least $25 million) – a blog. The acquisition is a clear example of the once avant-garde company trying to “restore lost relevance” as a Bloomberg article reports.
In a recent WebProNews article, Chris Crum | @CCrum237 elegantly demonstrates the critical importance of blogging along 3 main axis, the first of which even seemingly pointing to the opposite:
Still, content sharing on Facebook and Twitter is not letting up and the number one source of this content: Blogs
Analysis of 1.2 billion tweets revealed that retweets and replies were only occurring for 3 tweets out 10; i.e. over 70% of Twitter content falls on deaf ears
This all points to the death of the still young theory arguing that social media was killing blogging. This theory actually spawned from a low hanging fruit: with the mountains of available content out there, why would anyone continue to blog when sharing any content with thousands now consists of a couple of clicks?
But with the rise of social media, the exact opposite happened. The ever increasing noise levels, far from driving users away, have in effect pent up audiences’ appetite for fresh and relevant content and its main source is — and will remain for the foreseeable future — blogs. It has reestablished the rightful standing of these mines of ideas and creativity.
The demise of the blog’s death has not been an “there can only be one” outcome. Instead, blogging rebirth has participated in better defining the function of social media as a distribution channel, at its most basic level, and as a must have channel for engagement; the life-breathing entity of the very fresh and relevant content that makes up any good blog.
Do we now agree that the blog is alive? Good, now that we all agree, what’s a blog to do to succeed?
Search Is Alive, Well And Social Is The New Back Link
Before the advent of social networks, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was the primary mean by which bloggers could get to and build communities of subscribers. Search is alive, well and here to stay. Its battle is to stay relevant to its users and one way to do so is by incorporating the ever expanding social output. Search engines have already taken a jump on the issue. In early 2010 all three majors, Google, Yahoo and Bing each cut a $25 million check to Twitter for the right to have direct access to their “firehose”. Now, Google is turning to Facebook and its wealth of “like” data. In its search for business relevance as a revenue-generating entity, Facebook does see Google as competition. Google CEO Eric Schidmt recently declaring that, like or not, they will suck Facebook data into their voracious index.
This brings us a few conclusions about Lady Search:
It’s still the life blood online
It’s no longer only about keywords and back links, it also needs to be social to be relevant and thus rank
It’s now incoporating an element often overlooked: speed, web pages loading time type of speed
Why speed? The likes of Google are constantly refining their algorithms not only to make them faster, more comprehensive and relevant to users but also to squash the smarty pants looking to play their system via black hat tricks. This is all the more crucial that we are headed towards the “Internet of Things” — Speed (real-time data); scale (“unprecedented processing power”) and Sensors (“new kinds of data”) — where the volume of available online data is exploding every passing moment. Google VP Marissa Mayer | @marissamayer made a presentation last August at Xerox PARC entitled “The physics of data” and where she reported that in 2002 there were 5 exabytes — that’s 5 billion Gigabytes — of data online, which had risen in 2009 to 281 exabytes or 281 billion Gigabytes. The more data there exists and the more people consume it, the more there will be of it (noise levels notwithstanding) and the faster the means of consumption will need to be.
In the real-time web era if everyone can upload anything anywhere anytime and social networks already allow for that content to be super SEO friendly, then there has to be other criteria by which search engines sift through and prioritize mountains of content. This means that now, a site’s position in Google is not only judged by the keywords it contains, the fancy URL it is titled with, the number of back links its home blog boasts or how often it is updated or even how much content it has; it is now also judged by the speed it loads on users screen. This may seem obvious to many but Google only actually officially added speed to their algorithm this past April and if the latest Google enhancement dubbed “Instant” doesn’t convince you, I’m not sure what will.
Many web properties now offer to tell you how fast is your site. Some will boast a unique way to measure, for you to only start suspecting they’re trying to sell you their ‘optimization’ services (WebSiteOptimization) . Other offer scant details that are really of no use in bettering performance. Good resources are mentioned in Google’s official announcement, note the Firefox add-on PageSpeed in particular it provides great details as to how to improve a site (requires Firebug). A couple other have caught my attention that provide as much details as PageSpeed but don’t require messing with add-ons bloating a browser: WebPageTest and Pingdom.To get a quick sense as to your site’s performance run it a few of these tools and several times, it seems results are “moment-dependent”.
Either way it does seem for now that speed optimization is still subject to different “cuisines” with each tool giving slightly different recommendations: Yahoo’s YSlow for example differs from PageSpeed. Still, there are several easy wins most can handle, web-optimizing images is one and just being aware of the change is another.
Which speed measuring tools have you used and found useful?
So How Techie Should Businesses Be?
To the excellent Shannon Paul’s | @ShannonPaul question: “How Techie Should We Be?“, well not as much as necessary to build a whole website but definitely more than before. I believe there’s more “to developing a sustainable social media strategy” than just letting “technology take care of itself”. In the coming “Internet of Things”, devices and features are integral part of the way the communities, from whom we seek engagement, consume content and can sometimes make or break that content’s relevance: Flipboard on an iPhone is irrelevant but is very much à propos on an iPad. Gone are the days when a marketer only needs to remember channels: print, radio, signage and the big — for now still — one way tube, television.
Are there characters on Twitter, other than the most active, homogeneous group with the same interests that seems to be shouting at each other? Is this group making Twitter the opposite of what it should be: an open and inviting platform where everyone is welcome to voice their thoughts in whatever manner they wish. More voices are rising everyday against this matter of fact.
The article examined who should a blogger’s content address. When blogging or tweeting — Twitter is a micro-blog — is used for marketing purposes but only pursues peer approval, than what’s the point? Will only peers buy your products? It won’t work for most.
Another reply to the same tweet, supports Mario’s assumption: “I blog for my peers“. Let’s hope for him that his peers, are his customers. But for the vast majority of businesses eying Twitter as promotional tool, should they really be banking on Twitter to market their products and services? Are their customers really on Twitter?
Only 20% of Twitter Users Are Active
Mario is partly correct in that, of the current 105 million twitter accounts, only 20% are reportedly posting a tweet at least once a month. The rest is either just reading, bowing to a wrongly held belief that they “have nothing to say”, or is flat out of it; having opened an account, now on life support, either in the heat of the 2009 explosion of Twitter or were whirlwind by a convert’s “pitch”, that Twitter was the next Eldorado of riches and fame, only to quickly forget about it.
Twitter Is The Least Approachable Social Network… A Priori
In my experience and despite its incredible power in channeling information and connecting people, Twitter is for novices one of the most difficult social networks to approach. You can almost bet on the possible reaction following the explanation of the benefits of Twitter: instant addiction or flat rejection. Facebook, beyond it’s sheer mastodon size, is ‘pretty’: plenty of picture, avatars, movies and all around pleasant experience to anyone looking to idly be taken from a link to another without much effort, it’s like watching TV. In comparison, Twitter is like reading a book, it takes effort but, so they say, is more beneficial to one’s brain. Most people will always choose the easy way.
Many of the 20%, are “tweeps” — as the twitter lingo calls them — hailing from SEO, web design, social media or some other form of online marketing profession. Each one more often than not touting to the next… the next best thing.
Twitter initially took hold with techies and is still to a large extent the case. Anyone trying to get into twitter today, no matter how non techie they might be, must quickly absorb and use a new lingo to hope getting the most out of twitter. #Hashtags, for example, are now bleeding into the mainstream communication of the 20%, but to the lay person are a concept that usually takes a few analogies to grasp and much longer to adopt.
Businesses Should Still Pursue Twitter as Engagement Channel
These matter of facts should certainly not discourage businesses from using Twitter. The 20% are only the tip of the iceberg, driving and feeding the rest: readers and listener. They are out there and more of them are arriving in droves every moment:
180 million unique visitors come to the site every month
300,000 new users are signing up everyday or over 3 per second
Twitter’s search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day
The key is to find and engage them.
The “talkative” 20%er just needs to get their heads out of their bubble — It can be #intimidating y’all! — look around and work to make Twitter a more approachable environment for newbies and non-peers; so they can feel less threatened to participate and make the social network even more mainstream. Making is as such will benefit us all in making Twitter grow in a more relevant manner.
To all the others — minus the bots and spam accounts — don’t be frazzled by anyone telling you what to do or how to do it. You have more to say than you think and… you’re certainly not alone, read from other people battling for y’all:
SloMo is not to be confused with the currently very hot SoLoMo acronym. 
