What do we do when a resource disappears, or changes in such a way that we need to reconsider our options? That is the question many of us are facing in regard to Ning, the social media service that let's you create your own social network. I'm currently a member of over a dozen Ning Networks, have created 4 and also have admin privileges on 2 created by others. So the Ning question affects me both as a user and as a developer.

Today I'd like to ponder how we prepare for service changes, how much we rely on external systems and related topics. I don't have all the answers, to this so I'll give some examples and pose some questions, but I expect that it will be your feedback that really helps us make decisions about services such as Ning. I'll also be asking these questions tomorrow, May 5, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. (e.d.t.) via #smchat, a weekly Twitter chat on social media. Please feel free to share your comments here or during the live chat.

Q46A*: What should we consider when a service changes or goes away?

First we panic. Then we recall that the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe says "Don't Panic." So we calm down and think about the issues at hand. If the service is going away we need to examine our goals and determine what features we need in an alternative site. If the service is changing we must still examine our goals and consider whether or not the changed site will be able to accommodate them.

Back in 2008 I learned that one of my favorite social media services, Pownce, was going to shut down on December 15. In the frenzy to stay connected with Pownce friends, we rushed to explore other options, I created Pownce Refugees on Ning, others built their own sites, and soon we each had accounts scattered on services ranging from Soup to Vox. You can read more about this experience in my post, Social Media is People (but more enriching than Soylent Green*).

I'm a Web developer, so I could have built something from scratch, but I chose Ning to host Pownce Refugees because it was something I could do quickly enough to spread the word via Pownce before the shut-down occurred. While it didn't offer the same feature set, it offered enough options that we could continue to have the types of long conversations and media embeds that we'd grown used-to. Within a short period of time we had 100 members, and we were featured in the Ning Blog post, Former Pownce members find a new home. The site served as a useful home base, but over time it became less active. Now most of us communicate (with each other) primarily through Twitter, simply because it was the one service that everyone was already using. We missed the functionality of Pownce, but at least we were all on Twitter.

The heart of a social network lies in it's members. Ning, Vox and the Pownce clone, Schmownce (created by a fellow Pownce user) offered more features than Twitter, but they didn't have the same user base. Everyone (in our circle) was already on Twitter so it won simply because the people were already there. Other sites won as well. In an effort to make sure we wouldn't have to scramble again if Twitter died, many of us also friended each other on Facebook and other services so we'd have redundant connection points in play.

Q46B: The costs of maintaining community: remain on Ning or move.

Ning announced it's pricing plans today. The lowest cost plan is cheap enough that even tiny communities should be able to afford it. But they'll lose features they have now. #smchat could retain most of the features we currently use on the $19.95/year plan. Some of my other networks require more features and the other plans are more expensive. When deciding whether to stay or go we'll have to consider:

How many members will we lose if we move to a new network? Will there be exporting and importing tools available to help us migrate users to a new service with minimal attrition rates? Small networks such as #smchat may find it easier to transition to a new service than would larger networks.

How much content do we have on the site? Does it exist in multiple formats? Is there a way to cleanly export it so that we can also easily import it to another site? Or will we have to download and copy our content manually? Ning plans to provide us with tools for migration in the future, but we don't as yet know how they'll work.

Can we, as site owners, afford the cost of whichever Ning plan offers the services we require? Would our members be interested in contributing to those costs? Can these costs be offset by advertising or sponsorship? As an example, the University Web Developers network is currently sponsored by OmniUpdate. We have 3,225 members, so I would think OmniUpdate would want to keep sponsoring the site under the new plans. (I'm not an administrator for this site, but this would be my guess.)

Can we, as site owners, afford the cost of an alternative plan? Ning's most expensive offering is $49.95/month. Or you can save a bit by paying $499.95 for a full year. While that will seem expensive to many, it's far cheaper than hiring someone like me to build a WordPress/BuddyPress alternative. If you have the skill set to build your own network, that may save you money, but you'll still need to invest your time. Our Lake Erie Moose Society is thinking about WordPress, but we're a blogging group, so we were planning to create such a site for people to experiment with anyway...and we have several members who can contribute to the project of building the site, so I won't have to spend as much time on it as I would if building it by myself.

What other free options are available? Posterous announced that it would work on building an import feature so that Ning users could transition to that service. The features are quite different, but such options might be worth considering. One of the options mentioned for #smchat has been to use a group Wiki. What other options should we consider for #smchat and/or other networks?

Q46C: Knowing that free services may disappear, is it worth it to rely on them?

Or is it safer to stick with sites we build ourselves so that we don't become dependent on others that may not always be available? I think this really depends on the needs of your network. I can build my own sites, but I've still created Ning sites because they save me time. I don't use them for everything but the feature set and ease-of-use has made Ning a useful option. Building custom sites costs time and money, so I think we need to evaluate the risks and rewards of using platforms like Ning on a case-by-case basis.

Building your own site isn't an option for everyone. Those who use online services can mitigate the risks by providing alternative channels. Our Lake Erie Moose Society also has a Facebook page and a LinkedIn Group (we don't use that much). The Ning site is home base, but the others provide back-up communication channels and help us to reach out to people less familiar with Ning. (Some of our members have been following us on Facebook without ever visiting the Ning site.)

Q46D: What opportunities does the elimination of free Ning networks offer to others?

Posterous announced they will be building a Ning importer. WPMU has announced a Ning to BuddyPress importer plugin. I plan to experiment with WordPress and BuddyPress so that I can build networks for those seeking self-hosted alternatives. It's too early to tell how/if Ning's plans will benefit Ning users and the company, but it also creates an opportunity for others to reach out to Ning users with alternatives. Movable Type, for example, could try to gain more customers by offering importing recommendations to Ning users who might want to use Movable Type with Motion as a Ning alternative. Who else can benefit from this change? What should they be offering current Ning users to entice them to user their service instead?

Conclusions

As of now I've not decided what I'll do with each of my Networks, though I expect to keep at least one on the Ning platform. Each has different user needs that may be served with differing alternatives. We'll also be learning about more options in the weeks to come. What about you? What would you plan?

*On #smchat we number the questions by session. Tomorrow's chat will be our 46th, thus I've numbered my questions as 46A-46D.

Ning Resources and Examples

• Introducing Ning Pro, Ning Plus and Ning Mini
• Ning FAQ's on new plans
• Cleveland Social Media Club on Ning
• Lake Erie Moose Society on Ning
• University Web Developers on Ning

#smchat follow-up (added May 5 ~ 11:15 p.m.)

We had great participation during today's #smchat about Ning. I've posted a follow-up to the chat, including a copy of the chat transcript, on the #smchat Ning site under: Q46: What to do about Ning?

Fan me on Facebook—Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm sharing one tip per day, usually as a short paragraph with a link to something interesting I've found in the blogosphere.

At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful. And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool. (I also have links to more accounts on My Social Media Profiles page and am now also babbling on Buzz.)

As some of you know, I regularly participate in a variety of real-time chats on Twitter, including #smchat, a weekly discussion of best practices in social media. On Wednesday September 30th at 1:00 p.m. e.d.t. I'll be moderating #smchat as we discuss what social media tactics people have implemented, how they have measured the results and how they have performed.

To prepare participants for the event I thought it might be helpful to give some examples.

Many people are jumping on the social media bandwagon these days just because they feel they should. One hear's people say "Everyone's on Twitter and Facebook, we need to start Tweeting and put up a Facebook page." Needless to say this isn't usually the best approach. Before picking tools and tactics one must assess needs, develop measurable goals and identify a target audience. Once that is done, then one can start developing strategies and tactics to connect with that audience (in their space, on their terms) in a way that will serve one's goals most effectively.

Your goals are set, what's your social media strategy?

To get things started, I'll give you an example of some of the things I've been doing. One of my goals is to get you (or someone you know) to hire me to consult on social media, offer guidance on search engine optimization or design and build a Web site or custom WordPress blog. My audience includes small to medium sized businesses, academic departments at universities, individuals and others who may need such services. My strategy is to position myself as a reliable and knowledgeable resource for information on Internet marketing and related topics.

Tactics to implement this social media strategy include:

• Sharing links to worthwhile articles and videos via Google Reader Share, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and so forth—and conversing with people in those spaces.
• Blogging in-depth articles on Web related topics here on the Web Development Blog.
• Commenting on other blogs.
• Networking with special interest groups on LinkedIn, Ning and the real world.
• Answering questions on LinkedIn. (You can read more about my LinkedIn Q&A strategy in Maisha Walker's Inc. blog, The Internet Strategist in the article, Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3). Read the complete series to learn about the myriad ways you can use LinkedIn for business.)

This blog serves as the foundation for all of these strategies. It provides a destination for traffic from the social media services and offers content for me to share via those services. Since it is built as a part of my overall site, it also gives visitors quick and easy access to other information such as the services I offer, my portfolio and my contact form—and I'm working on some site changes that will make that even easier.

Time is a major cost factor in social media

Measuring marketing results is fairly straightforward. If I want to know which activities are driving the best traffic to my Web site I can look at Google Analytics to see who is visiting from where, how long they stay on site, how many pages they view, etc. This tells me that LinkedIn brings in more new traffic while Facebook brings in the most repeat traffic. Visitors from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all also read more pages and spend more time on site than visitors from StumbleUpon.

In terms of leads and sales I can count the requests for proposals that come in via LinkedIn messages, Facebook mail and my contact form. Measuring the ROI comes from comparing my time investment to the results. In direct mail one measures the cost per sale in terms of dollars spent. When implementing my own social media strategies I must measure the cost per sale first in hours worked, then use that to calculate costs.

Social Media goals come in many flavors—not just marketing

Networking with peers, monitoring your products and brand, enhancing customer service, collaborating with colleagues, sharing policies and procedures, listening for ideas, sharing knowledge, and other functions are also popular and practical uses for social media. Here are a few more examples of strategies and tactics one might use for a few of these goals.

Listening for ideas via social media

During last week's meeting of the Cleveland Social Media Club we listened to a panel discussion in which members of the local media discussed how they use social media. Panelists included:

• Kaye Spector - Health and Medical Reporter, The Plain Dealer
• Howard Fencl - Assistant News Director, WKYC-TV
• Joseph Sheppa - Interactive Content Manager, WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 WCPN - ideastream®
• Scott Suttell - Managing Editor, Crain's Cleveland Business
• Denise Polverine - Editor in Chief, Cleveland.com

As one would expect, these media outlets are all using Facebook and Twitter to publish headlines and links to stories or videos on their Web sites. But they're also listening for information. News travels so quickly via social media that it's not unusual for them to first hear something on Facebook that they can later confirm through other channels. They also listen to their followers to gauge interest levels in certain topics and events. If their Twitter followers are all talking about X and not about Y, then the newspapers, magazines and T.V. stations know that their readers and viewers have an interest in hearing more about X.

Others—including bloggers as well as those in mainstream media—use social media to listen for ideas. When I answer questions on LinkedIn, I can see if certain types of questions in my field are trending. This can give me ideas for blog posts I should write. I also read blogs and listen to podcasts to keep up with information and get new ideas.

For instance yesterday, while listening to Diggnation, I discovered that Adam Savage, co-host of Mythbusters reads a wide array of blogs and visits Digg.com daily to get story ideas for the T.V. show. He's using the same technique for mainstream media that I use for my humble blog. By simply following my own listening routine, I discovered what he was doing so that I could use him as another example in this post.

Measuring the results of listening is somewhat murky. If you need to justify this use of time one could create a spreadsheet that would tally how many ideas you find each day then develop a ratio comparing "finds" and usefulness to "time-spent." But if you are also reading and listening to increase knowledge it may be harder to quantify. How does one measure the value of such activities? I know that everything I learn in this field makes me better at what I do, but I've not come up with a calculation to demonstrate how much more effective I may be now than I was 5 years ago when I knew less. What I do know is that I will better serve my readers and clients if I keep striving to learn more.

Social media strategies in local politics

Ari Herzog and Jill Miller Zimon are both long-time bloggers, who I've come to know through their blogging activities. Jill is a writer and political analyst who blogs at Write Likes She Talks. Ari is an online media strategist and community manager for business and government who blogs at AriWriter. Each of them is running for City Council in their respective home towns and each is using social media in their campaigns.

One could argue that political campaigning is similar to mainstream marketing, but I think it also bears a particular connection to brand management. When running for office, candidates need to increase name recognition, build a positive reputation, let voters know about their goals and demonstrate how they would serve their communities if elected.

As writers, Ari and Jill have an advantage in this sphere. Each has produced a wealth of online material that is part of the online historical record. If you read their blogs, you will see that they are both candid and direct. While I eschew the word "transparency" they've both exhibited the real meaning of this in their writing. Neither hides behind jargon or political doubletalk, they speak their minds so that you can tell exactly what their position is.

Their similarities extend to social media. As you can see from the links below, each of them is using an array of social media services, and neither is new to this medium. While their strategies may have some subtle differences, both are using social media to spread their message and to let voters know that they are listening.

Jill Miller Zimon - campaigning for Pepper Pike, OH, City Council

• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Group
• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Page
• Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council (Main Web site)
• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon Flickr Photos
• Jill Miller Zimon on LinkedIn
• Zimon for Council on Twitter
• Jill Miller Zimon You Tube Videos

Ari Herzog - campaigning for Newburyport, MA, City Council

• Ari Herzog for Newburyport City Council - Facebook Page
• Ari Herzog (Main Web site)
• Ari Herzog for Newburyport City Council Campaign Blog
• Ari Herzog on LinkedIn
• Ari 4 Newburyport on Twitter

Measuring the success of their campaigns will be relatively easy. They'll either win or lose. But measuring the impact of social media on the campaigns may be trickier. Will having more Facebook fans make a difference? Does it help to drive Twitter traffic to your site? How does one measure voter engagement? Blog comments? Online donations? Volunteers? How would you measure the results?

What strategies are you using for social media?

Frank Eliason has had great success using http://twitter.com/comcastcares to provide proactive customer service to Comcast customers. The Cleveland Social Media Club used it's Ning Network in conjunction with Google docs to collaborate on our Welcome to Social Media eBook. Companies and universities alike subscribe to Twitter searches to monitor brand and product mentions. What other ways would you use social media tools to serve your specific goals? How do you know if your strategies are working? Do you have measurement techniques in place to gauge success?

Please feel free to share your ideas and experiences in the comments below and/or during next Wednesday's live #smchat. If you've not previously participated in a Twitter chat, you can learn more in my article, Twitter chats: if you can’t meet in real space, meet in real time. I look forward to reading your ideas and suggestions.

Social Media Measurement & Chat Resources

• #smchat Schedule
• #smchat Network on Ning (for ongoing discussion)
• Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat
• Introduction to Measuring Social Media for PR/Marketing
• Measuring Social Media ROI: Does size matter?

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream. (I just need 13 more fans to get a custom url; let's see if we can make that goal this week!)

July meeting of the Cleveland Webbloggers

Social media is a great way to make face-to-face connections. I started going to our Cleveland Webbloggers meet-up group last summer. These real-life meetings have given me a chance to get to know the personalities behind the usernames. When we gather together, be it in a small group like last week or a larger assembly of 20 or more, we'll talk about anything from writing and blogging platforms to Cleveland politics and philosophy. The mood of the group sets the topic and the tone. But at it's core, the Cleveland Webbloggers group gives us a chance to share ideas and best practices with our peers, whether they blog professionally or just for fun.

Of course, as you know, one can only cover so much material in one monthly meeting. And not all of our peers are local. To reach others in our topical niche, particularly those who may come from other industries or backgrounds, we reach out through the Web. Each week via social media services such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, StumbleUpon, blogs, etc., I connect with people all over the world, from Syracuse to Singapore.

Most of this is done via time shifting. If I'm still up and Tweeting, when my friend Wayne gets to work in England, it means I've stayed up well past my bedtime. While that is not unusual, it is more often the case that Wayne will share a link via Twitter or save a bookmark on Delicious while I'm off dreaming about vampire sea turtles discovering underwater time portals—or whatever other nonsense floats through my mind. After I wake up I'll see what he and the other Europeans have shared so that I can respond, share my own links, and so forth. Generally speaking this works quite well.

Time-shifting is incredibly useful, but sometimes it's just more efficient to meet in real-time. Skype calls and chat rooms are quite handy when you know the participants in advance. But for larger topical meetings—open to a wide audience—real-time chats via Twitter are a popular alternative.

Last night I spent 2 hours chatting with 100+ fellow bloggers on my couch.

100 people would be a tight fit even on a giant couch like this.

As you may have guessed, my couch doesn't have enough room to accommodate 100 people. But it does have plenty of room for me and my laptop—through which I can login to Twitter and start chatting with bloggers, social media advocates or any other group that meets regularly online.

What are real-time Twitter chats and how do they work?

Real-time Twitter chats are typically held on a weekly basis, though scheduling may vary. Each topic-based chat picks a recurring day and time to meet, then assigns a unique hashtag for users to add to their Tweets. The hashtags mark the Tweets as belonging to the chat so that users can easily follow the discussion through a variety of online tools.

At the start of a chat, a moderator/host will typically ask people to introduce themselves, then ask questions or suggest specific topics for discussion. Some chats may follow a rigid format such as devoting 15 minutes to each question, while other chats evolve more organically. I participate regularly in two chats:

• #blogchat, hosted by @MackCollier is a forum for people to discuss issues related to blogging, including writing, marketing, blog platforms, RSS feeds, design, etc. Meetings are held Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. U.S. eastern time.
• #smchat, hosted by @SourcePOV (Chris Jones) "explores Social Media best practices, and new ways to drive value in this space, with thought to collaborative innovation and viable knowledge networks." Meetings are held Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m. U.S. eastern time.

Other popular chats include #journchat ( journalists, bloggers and public relations—one of the oldest and most popular chats), #litchat (for booklovers) and #eventprofs (for event planning professionals). Meryl K. Evans assembled a very useful list of Twitter chats on her blog. New chats are constantly being added, so the list is now maintained as an interactive spreadsheet. Whether you are interested in agriculture, design, or food, there's probably a chat available to suit your needs. If not, check the schedule, choose a time, pick a hashtag and start one yourself!

Tools for following Twitter hashtags

If you're following more than a dozen people on Twitter, you've probably noticed that it gets a bit noisy. Trying to follow a hashtag in the middle of your normal Twitter stream can be even more difficult. Thankfully there are a variety of Twitter services and tools that can help. Here are a few of the more popular ones.

Tweetchat

Twitter Search

If you search on a particular hashtag, such as #smchat, Twitter search will pull up a list of all the most recent Tweets including that hashtag. If you see a Tweet to which you would like to respond, you can just click the reply button, write your message and type #smchat at the end of your Tweet. Then return to the search page to continue reading.

TweetChat

Sign into Tweetchat using your existing Twitter ID and password. Then type in the hashtag you would like to follow, such as #blogchat, and TweetChat will present you with a page listing all of the current #blogchat Tweets. Tweetchat features a box where you can type your Tweets and also includes buttons that make it easy to reply or retweet messages.

Tweetgrid

Tweetgrid works similarly to Tweetchat and is the service I use most often. Simply search on the hashtag you wish to follow and you will be brought to a page listing the recent Tweets with a feature enabling you to reply, reTweet, etc. If you select the "party" option instead of the "search" option you can also designate your username and the username(s) of the chat's host. This will bring up a page showing separate columns for the main stream, your own Tweets, and those of the moderator. This can make things a bit easier to follow.

What the hashtag?!

This user-editable hashtag encyclopedia let's users follow a chat as they would in other tools, but also let's moderators add descriptive information about the hashtag to the page. Users may also create transcripts of chat sessions based on date-ranges. These can be printed to .pdf files to be saved for archival purposes. As an example you can read the .pdf transcript from this week's #blogchat.

Monitter

Monitter is a tool to let you monitor keywords used on Twitter in real-time. When you enter the site you are presented with 3 columns listing various searches. Replace the search in any column with a hashtag, @username or plain word to follow it's mentions. You can respond to conversations by clicking a reply or retweet button appearing under each Tweet.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is an Adobe Air application that you can use instead of the Twitter Web page for all of your Twitter activities. I use it because I can create columns multiple columns on topics such as Cleveland, marketing and higher education to which I can assign the users I follow most frequently. Tweetdeck also lets you filter columns by keywords, follow Facebook status updates and create search columns. The latter is another popular way to follow a hashtag or chat.

While these tools are helpful for following Twitter chats, they're also handy for following hashtags for other reasons. People use hashtags for topical searches such as tracking #recipes people post on Twitter, following Tweets related to conferences/events and to keep track of trending topics such as the Iran Election or Spymaster.

Twitter real-time chats offer access to new insights and opinions

As I hinted in the beginning, real-time chats give us the opportunity to connect with people we might never have the chance to meet locally. They give us access to people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. I find this useful because it gives me insights into different perspectives.

For instance, recently on #smchat a lot of discussion has been focused on the topics of intellectual property and knowledge management. This is a concern for many companies exploring social media. They want to share information with customers that will help sell products and they want to share knowledge with other business and government collaborators as part of product development. But they also need to safeguard trade secrets and other confidential information. So the question for us is, how do they manage both? Should companies restrict access to technologies that make sharing easier? Should they open up technologies but educate users about policies regarding what should and shouldn't be shared? If we as social media advocates come up with solutions, how do we educate the corporate leaders who would implement such policies? How does the model change based on the industry in question or the communications goal? These are hard questions, so naturally we could spend months or years trying to sort this all out.

What's intriguing about this discussion is the variety of minds adding input. When I worked for a university I pondered communications concerns with colleagues in my department, the attorneys' office, ITS or with clients in other campus departments. I might also ponder such ideas with others in higher education or Web development. But I rarely had the chance to hold such discussions with attorneys, engineers, marketers, accountants, etc., working in industries ranging from consultants and government contractors to advertising agencies, restaurant managers and manufacturers—all at the same time.

I find this useful because people in industry X may be facing challenges that those of us in industry Y never encounter. By bringing everyone together we have a unique opportunity to learn how these questions impact others and we can take away knowledge that we can put to use in our own fields. This strikes me a an incredibly valuable way to collaborate.

Twitter chats are a great way to find cool Tweeps

Of course, useful insights tend to be shared by smart minds. The people who provide the ideas are people worth following. I often follow (and am followed back by) dozens of new contacts after a good chat session. While many Twitter users are overly concerned with gaining a large quantity of followers, my focus is on quality. It's hard enough to follow 1,000+ people, so if I'm going to do it they better have something useful to say. The people I meet during Twitter chats do.

This sounds great, but seriously, how could you possibly have a worthwhile discussion in 140 character Tweets?

Before I started attending chats I wondered the same thing. It's challenging to make a point in 140 characters, especially when those characters must also include the hashtag. But in a way it's easier in real-time. If you make point A, and I respond with point B, you'll see it right away. Then you can respond back and things start flowing like a normal conversation. You may have to break up an idea into a few separate Tweets, but somehow it all comes together.

Conversations begun during Twitter chat can also continue later in other venues. For instance #smchat has a sister site on Ning through which users can post discussions, questions, videos and other documents. Mack Collier, posts a recap of the #blogchat on his blog to which users can add additional comments. With all of the social media tools available, there's always some way to continue the conversation.

If there's a Twitter chat related to your field of interest, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Twitter chat and hashtag resources

• Fast & Furious - Twitter Chat (reactions from a guest chat host)
• #hashtags directory
• List of Twitter Chats
• Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags
• Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat

Everyone these days has been offering advice on how to use Twitter. Sometimes that advice is judgmental. But Twitter is a tool than can be wielded in many different ways. There's no one size fits all solution that works for everyone. Last year most of the Twitter advice I saw was focused on practicalities. Instructions were shared on how to use #hashtags to indicate a topic, using RT to ReTweet, when to DM (direct message), where to find people worth following, etc. There was also plenty of advice on Twitter etiquette, but now that seems to have gone past the Emily Post phase.

Now there seems to be more of an inclination to suggest that Twittering "this way" instead of "that way" is the preferred way to behave in the Twitter social sphere. While there are many rules that polite Tweeters should follow, such as not being insulting, others are more subjective and depend on each user's situation. Who we follow and what we Tweet are two subjects that seem to get people worked up. Today I'd like to focus on the "who to follow" debate and whether or not this is an issue of etiquette.

First a few thoughts on manners

Manners allow us to put others at ease. These "polite" rules are designed to smooth interactions between individuals. They provide us with a framework so that we can behave in a manner that makes people comfortable and doesn't cause embarrassment or discord.

If we follow the rules of manner—within our particularly society—then we can all play nicely in the same sandbox without squabbling over each other's toys or making someone cry. In most circumstances, we can follow the same general rules on Twitter that we would in regular society. We just need to think of parallels found in the outside world and keep in mind that Twitter is global.

The international nature of Twitter means we should be considerate of differing social mores. For example, those of us used to an American confrontational style should keep in mind that this style may be discomfiting to our friends in Asia and the Middle East—where the practice of allowing others to "save face" is more common. Those of us tweeting in English should also consider the differences in American and British variants of the language. Avoiding words that have different meanings across the pond can will help us communicate more clearly and in a manner that won't offend.

Must we follow back?

Assuming we've all agreed to play nicely in the Twitter sandbox, what are the rules when it comes to following? I've had people tell me, "I'm not going to follow X. He doesn't follow back his followers, he just wants to build numbers so I'm not going to follow him." Personally if X provides useful information I don't care if he follows me back or not. If X posts self-indulgent marketing garbage, that's a different story, but I don't think we can judge a Tweeter's value by their following policy alone.

What do you think? Is a user's following policy a question of etiquette or personal preference? Must we follow back everyone who follows us? Should we automatically rebuff those who don't?

Some say following back one's followers is the correct and polite thing to do. They accuse the twitterati who follow few, but are followed by many, of being anti-social Twitter snobs who don't want to engage the community but just want the attention. But is that a fair accusation? Does it apply to everyone?

What would Emily Post say?

To get a better sense of whether this is an issue of etiquette, I'd like to compare following habits to two real world situations.

1. Do you send holiday cards to everyone who sends one to you? I don't, but I've never made it a practice to send cards. If I did, I'd draw up a list based on my friends and family. I wouldn't include the paint contractors, real estate agents, printers and others who are hoping to do business with me. Nor would I send one to every person with whom I've made an acquaintance. I'd probably have a set budget for cards and a certain allotment of time to spend on them. Thus I'd focus my finite resources on the people I think would be most happy to hear from me during the holidays.

2. Are we expected to attend every event to which we're invited? Must we invite everyone (who invites us) to all of our own events? No. I'm sure most people would like it if we could attend all of their events. But they also understand that our time is limited, we may have conflicting obligations. Similarly they know that we can't invite them to all of our own parties due to costs, space limitations, different interest groups, etc.

There are many reasons we may choose not to accept an invitation, and it is perfectly acceptable to RSVP in the negative without explaining our reasons. Twitter should be no different.

Twitter Snobs: define them by intentional actions rather than follower ratios

Given that I see no moral or societal obligation for users to follow back their followers, that doesn't mean that we don't see bad follower habits on Twitter. But instead of judging a Tweeter as a snob based on his/her follower/followee ratio, what if we thought instead about intentions.

Good Twitter Intentions

Many popular Tweeters, be they actors or tech celebrities follow few but are followed by many. While some have campaigned on podcasts and T. V. to get more followers, many others have not. These people are followed by many simply because many people like the content they produce.

Such Tweeters follow few others for their own reasons. Often they just want to manage their lists so they can focus on the people who produce the content that is of most interest to them. This could mean that they are only following friends, family, peers in their field or anyone else that seems appropriate.

I have no problem with this. The primary value I get from Twitter is the information shared by my fellow Tweeters. Many of these people feel the same way. If we somehow forced these folks to follow us all back in return, then they'd be stuck sifting through over-crowded Twitter streams wasting time trying to find the information they really want. I see no reason to make their lives more difficult just to appease my ego.

Bad Twitter Intentions

Yes there are Twitter snobs. Some people are online to gain followers rather than to gain information. We see these people following hundreds at a time—with a motive of gaining followers—then quickly unfollowing them all to boost their ratio and seem cool. I would consider this to be bad behavior because they initiated the action—to make people follow them—yet had no intention of continuing the relationship or engaging in conversation.

Such people often provide other clues that can help distinguish them as snobs or spammers. They may have an annoyingly polished profile picture, tweet about their follower count repeatedly, identify themselves as some sort of expert (though you are in their field and have never heard of them) and tweet about themselves or their projects without engaging in conversations or retweeting links from regular people.

Collectively their Twitter usage habits show that their goals are not to engage with the community but instead to promote their product, service or ego.

Let's give the popular tweeps a break.

There's nothing wrong with wanting more followers. For those of us who have something to market, it's helpful to build our follower lists. My Tweeting patterns are mostly about sharing ideas and conversations, but if Tweeting can bring more readers to my blog, or help me find clients in need of my Web services, then a larger following will help. That said, I still prefer to use a targeted approach. I seek out people who share interesting insights and ideas and may also find value in what I share. Conversation comes first, marketing second.

I'm not one of the "popular tweeps" but I think many of them share a similar attitude. Instead of judging them on their followee/follower ratios, let's judge them on how they play in our Twitter sandbox overall. I'm not saying you have to start following these people if it doesn't suit your strategy. But if you're snubbing Tweeters because you think they have snubbed you, you may be missing out on people who really aren't as evil or rude as you think.

Heidi's following policy

I follow back most of the people who follow me, but not all. I get 5-25 requests a day, so I visit each, skim their profile and Tweets, then follow back if they don't seem to be spam, aren't on some popularity quest and share a sufficient variety of Tweets to seem interesting. That said, as my numbers build I am becoming a bit more finicky. I'm beginning to look more closely and not follow people whose Tweets are so narrow in focus or so out of my topic range that we're not likely to converse.

More on Twitter following attitudes

• Ari Herzog: Can You Help My Twitter Growing Pains?*
• Ari Herzog: Why My Twitter Train is Stopping*
• Inside the Minds of Twitter Users
• To Follow or Not to Follow; that is the Question
• Twitter Follow Rules - Who To Follow

* My friend Ari recently experimented with different Twitter following strategies. He'd been following few, then tried following all. That became overwhelming so he went back to following fewer than he had originally. These articles walk us through the process and the issues he considered in making his decision.

Genesis: Follow You Follow Me

Somehow I don't think Twitter was what Phil Collins had in mind.

Heidi thinks the veil between the 'brick and mortar' world and the 'cyber world' becomes more elusive each day.

That's what I wrote as my Facebook status message when I returned home from the Cleveland Social Media Club party on December 10. As the name suggests the Cleveland SMC is "a community for the champions of Social Media and those seeking to learn." (If you live in Northeast Ohio and work with, or are interested in, social media you should join.) What makes this group different from many online communities is the regional nature of it. We're all here so we can actually meet in person. As such they've already had several events, but this was the first one that I attended.

My friends tell me that I'm no longer shy, but I am an introvert, so I have to admit I was just a wee bit nervous. Although I knew a few people in the group—either in person or online—many were unknown, or at best vague cyber-acquaintances. Thus I wasn't sure how well I'd handle the small talk. As it turns out it wasn't a problem. I knew the host, Dave Stack, from the real world, his best friend is friends with one of my best friends, I'd previously met a few folks from a Cleveland bloggers meet-up, and George Nemeth was there and George knows everybody and is more than happy to make introductions. Within no time I felt as at ease as I would have with people I'd known much longer.

I met some great people and look forward to seeing them again at a future event. But I don't have to wait until the next event to continue the conversations. Members of Cleveland SMC can friend each other and converse on that site, but we also post our other profiles there. Since the event I've connected with several of them on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. And thus the conversations continue.

It doesn't matter if/when we meet again face-to-face. It doesn't matter if one person prefers Twitter and another prefers Facebook. Once the connection is made it can be continued on any one or more of the online services available. Cleveland Social Media Club (on Ning) provides an information hub, but it's also enabled us to easily create multiple redundant pathways to one another. Thus, if one service goes down, the connections aren't lost, we still have other channels available.

When a service goes down: the demise of Pownce

While multiple channels are available, Pownce was my social media tool of choice. Alas, in early December, Leah Culver announced that Pownce would be shutting down on December 15.

Pownce was the service that hooked me on social media. It's where I learned that you could forge real connections online. Pownce gave me access not only to my peers but also to leaders in the field. If I went to Pownce with an idea I had about a Web project I wasn't getting feedback from just anybody. I was getting feedback from people in all areas of the business—ranging from the managing director of Octane Interactive, Wayne Smallman, to the lead designer at Digg, Daniel Burka. Pownce was an incredible resource.

Of course, it wasn't all about work. Powncers shared photos, absurd videos and thought-provoking articles while also conversing about everything from politics to bacon. My friends group contained liberals and republicans, atheists and born-agains and people from several different continents and cultures. But we had our geekiness in common, so everyone played nicely together in the sandbox. As we shared media and stories, personal experiences and jokes we got to know each other on many levels, much as one does in the brick and mortar world.

By the time December rolled around we'd become a pretty tight community. Then we heard about the shutdown. As you can imagine, the community reeled. Where would we go? What would we do? Sure we're on Twitter, but how can you discuss global warming or share pierogie recipes in 140 characters? It was clear, the sky was falling and there was very little we could do about it. Or was there?

A community comes together

All gnashing of teeth and wailing aside (and yes there was a lot of that) one of the first things people did was to start announcing where else they could be found. Pownce always made it easy to post our other profile addresses on the site, but now people were indicating where their primary addresses would be. People posted their addresses for Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. People shared e-mails. One fellow declared that he preferred IM and shared 5 different ways to connect with him that way.

We had this information, we had the ability to download our data, but it was clear that we were scattering into the wind. In my panic, I decided I needed to create a new, possibly temporary home for us, someplace that would still exist after December 15, where we could continue to share our contact information. Given that I was already familiar with Ning, I created Pownce Refugees, a place to keep the community alive after Pownce shutdown.

At the time I really wasn't certain about my long term goals, I just needed something I could launch quickly. I configured the page to use the colors from the Pownce home page, enabled some features that I thought might be useful and spread the word. As I and others started playing with it I added RSS feeds of Pownce mentions on Twitter, the Pownce Exiles Room on FriendFeed, the Pownce Exiles group on Vox, Pownce in the news and so forth. This way I thought we could use this page to keep track of Pownce-related activity elsewhere.

The next thing I did was to start creating groups for Pownce theme days. On Pownce we would often post content related to a day's theme. Thus we had Music Video Monday, Wordle Wednesday, Foto Friday and so forth. It sounds silly, but it was a good way to get new people involved as it gave them ideas on things to post. When you are new to social networking, it can be intimidating, but theme days provided some great starting points.

As I was busy priming the pump with groups and content, people started joining. Then they told other people to join. They spread the word on Twitter and other places, and within no time we had more than 100 members.

100? That's not much, Twitter has 6 million users

100 isn't much (we're now at 139), but it was enough to begin a new community. It was also enough to catch the attention of the Ning staff. As a result of our rapid growth, they featured us on the Ning Blog in an article entitled, Former Pownce members find a new home.

This was actually a fairly major accomplishment as Ning is a rather large enterprise. In April 2008 there were over 230,000 networks on Ning, and they were growing at over 1,000 per day. Only 3-4 are featured on the blog in any given day.

The other good news was our traffic. I created Pownce Refugees on December 1, and installed the analytics on December 6. As of December 15 (Pownce shut-down) we had

• 933 unique visitors
• 1,870 total visits
• 12,836 page views (6.86 pages per visit)

By way of comparison this blog was 20 months old by the time it started generating that level of traffic.

Our traffic sources also told an interesting story.

• 56.2% were direct traffic, meaning members (or others) who already knew the address,
• 40.11% were from referring sites and
• only3.69% were from search engines.

The top referring sites were Pownce, Stumbleupon, Gmail, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook (I'd created a Facebook page for the site), Plurk and Ustream.

Those of you who check stats regularly know that this is atypical. Search engine traffic often plays a much larger role, often times 50% or more. But this was a social media site, marketed through social media to active social media users. It worked well because we (I credit our early adopters for spreading the word) were focused on a very specific niche (Pownce users), who were well-versed in social media tools, and we had a deadline that affected everyone involved.

Where are we now?

Since then we've lost a bit of momentum and probably need to refocus marketing on community building strategies. But traffic is steady and we have a core of regular visitors. As of yesterday we've had a total of:

• 3,000 unique visitors
• 5,193 total visits
• 25,741 page views (4.96 pages per visit)

Traffic sources have shifted slightly. The increase in direct traffic is from membership growth and usage.

• 67.8% are direct traffic
• 27.09% are from referring sites and
• 5.1% are from search engines.

Where will we be next year?

Who knows? The goal was to stay in touch. That seems to be working. In the meantime various members of the community and others are also working to build services with features more akin to the original Pownce. And while the economic climate is gloomy, new services continue to emerge. In another year we could be spending our lunch hours exploring some yet unknown site with yet another funny name.

But what this has shown me is that social media works. In the right situation it can be a very effective marketing tool. But it's the people and the connections between them, that make it so.

* For those 7 of you unfamiliar with the science fiction classic, Soylent Green, there is a classic line towards the end that states, "Soylent Green is people!" Alas, soylent green was also what people ate.

What is the secret of Soylent Green?

The other day journalist Jimi Izrael sent out an e-mail about a new blogging class he's teaching at Tri-C. It occurred to me that this might be a good opportunity for those of you (in Greater Cleveland) who are thinking of taking up blogging. It also made me think that this would be a good time to share some of the other great resources available to bloggers, Web developers and those interested in social media in Northeast Ohio. Whether you want to take a class or network with others in the field, here are some things that may be of interest.

Introduction to Blogging

In this special topics course at Cuyahoga Community College, journalist and blogger Jimi Izrael will introduce you to the myriad types of blogs and explore their evolution as an outgrowth of modern journalism.

Jimi Izrael's work appears in the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, American Spectator, Washington Post, and The Plain Dealer. Moderator of the "Barbershop" on NPR's "Tell me more with Michel Martin."

Monday and Wednesday from 6:30 p.m. to 9:20 p.m. beginning October 20, 2008. Contact Jimi Izrael or view the flyer to learn more.

Bail Out Cleveland! Local Internet Guru Offers Free Consulting at the Cleveland Free Stamp

Need some free Internet advice? If so you're in luck "Jim Kukral, a lifelong Clevelander and web-famous Internet guru wants to help ease the pain. He’s offering free Internet consulting to any business that’s in need of guidance. From web marketing, or strategy or blogging help, Jim is willing to bail out Cleveland businesses in need, for free."

Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. by Free Stamp in downtown Cleveland.

Telling your story: Nonprofits and the Media

Sponsored by the Center for Community Solutions this half day seminar will offer ideas non-profits can use in promoting their services through social media and introduce you to members of the local media with particular insight in the field. Learn more and register online.

Thursday, December 11, 2008
8 a.m. - Noon
Cleveland Sight Center

Cleveland Web Design and Development Meetup

Founded in 2006, the Cleveland Web Design and Development Meetup is "here to help folks come together to learn about and discuss making the web, web pages, web programming, all that sorta thing. Membership is open to all. And it's free." The groups holds regular meetings, offers study groups for novices and provides a variety of helpful online resources.

Cleveland Web Standards Association

Founded in 2007, "The Cleveland Web Standards Association (CWSA) is grounded on the premise of sharing information in a relaxed atmosphere. The purpose of this association is to provide practical instruction and techniques that will elevate the quality and functionality coming from Cleveland firms and free agents. We hold monthly gatherings that include presentations on best practices for developing web sites. The gatherings are open to any person interested in web design/development, no matter what their current skill level is."

Additionally the CWSA publishes a blog aggregator featuring member blogs covering Web development and related topics.

The Cleveland Weblogger Meetup Group

Founded in 2002, the Cleveland Weblogger Meetup Group meets once a month to discuss blogging, Northeast Ohio, politics and anything else that seems interesting. I finally made it to my first meeting with them last month during which we ate some tasty vittles while discussing gender roles and a variety of other topics. As I understand it topics vary widely depending on who shows up. If you're a local blogger or just thinking about becoming one, you may find it interesting.

Social Media Club - Cleveland (SMC)

Founded this summer, "SMC is being organized for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and for promoting media literacy." Members can share ideas and questions through online discussions as well as meet each other in person at monthly meetings.

Not in Cleveland?

Similar organizations and meetups occur all over the world. Whether you want to join a meetup group that meets in person or prefer to share information online, the following will help get you started.

• Find Web Design Meetup Groups
• Social Software Meetup Groups
• Search Engine Optimization Meetup Groups
• FriendFeed Social Media Room
• FriendFeed Social Media Club Room

Obviously this is but a tiny sampling of the resources available. Feel free to suggest other resources that may benefit fellow readers in the comments below.

Forthcoming topics: More about URLs, Linking Strategies…

In prior reflections on social media, I've mentioned how services such as Facebook, de.licio.us, Twitter, etc. can be effective marketing tools. Much of this has to do with the fact that they foment two-way communication. When we join these communities and services we participate in a dialogue between our friends and contacts. We make connections based upon common interests and share information accordingly. The fact that we can share things—such as our blogs, Web sites, products or services—that will be of interest to those who follow us is what makes these so useful to us as marketers.

What we don't discuss as often is the fact that these same qualities are what make these tools useful to us as consumers of products, services and information.

We know that success in social media requires us to participate in both sides of the conversation. We must speak, listen and respond online just as we would it a real world conversation. But the point of listening isn't just to abide by the rules of the game; the point of listening is to learn. The ones who do all of the talking are missing out because they don't give themselves the opportunity to learn new ideas or to hear vital feedback about their own ideas.

Imagine a social situation in the real world. Have you ever come home from a party all excited because you spent the night telling 18 different people all about your collection of pressed flowers and the methods you use for preparing them? Neither have I. But I have come home excited that I met interesting people. Usually I find them interesting not just because of the topics they discuss, but because of the way they discuss them. They share their viewpoints, listen to your responses, then respond in kind. In this way the conversation evolves in a way that will be of interest to both parties.

The same thing happens in social media. If you follow a like minded group of people on Pownce, Digg, StumbleUpon (or wherever you hang out online) you soon get a sense of who just talks and who is also listening. This may happen over the course of weeks or months rather than hours, but over time you get a sense of who you should be following.

As you do so you find that they start sharing more and more information that is of value to you. I noticed this in particular today when I forwarded on yet another bit of information I'd found via social media.

Recent tidbits gleaned from social media

Today at lunch I was checking Pownce, Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter I saw that David Bradley had shared a link to an article called, "How ‘Mini-Funnel’ Websites Can Help You Increase Traffic, Generate Leads and Build Exposure." Initially the title of the article sounded like it might be some sort of nefarious black hat SEO strategy. But I followed the link because David, who I know through Wayne, wouldn't condone, let alone link to something dodgy.

When I got to the article I saw that it was written by Maki who I first met on Pownce and now follow on Twitter and Friendfeed. The article demonstrated a fairly clever idea that might work well for some upcoming projects in our department so I forwarded the link to my teammates.

A few days earlier I saw that George Nemeth had posted a link on Pownce about the newly formed Social Media Club - Cleveland network on Ning, so I passed that along via Twitter—just in case there are any Clevelanders following me who aren't already following George. (This seems unlikely because George, of Brewed Fresh Daily, is like the Robert Scoble of Cleveland in that he is online almost everywhere and somehow manages to keep up with it all.)

A few days before that I received a shout on Digg from Kyle James, a fellow bloghighed blogger, linking to an amusing video Butler University produced (shown on this page) in which a Bulldog showcases their athletic facilities whilst trying to find a missing mascot costume. I passed this along to colleagues as well.

Listen and learn

Those are but a few examples of intriguing things I've found through social media. The Internet is rife with information, but when you make the right connections, and listen to their recommendations you'll soon find that the most useful (or amusing) content begins to stand out.

Where have I been hiding?

For those who may be wondering why this blog has been so quiet lately, I've been doing a lot of traveling this summer and have been swamped with other projects in between. I've just returned from the Galápagos—it seemed like a good way to kick off the Year of Darwin and Evolution—so as soon as I catch up on all the email things should be returning to normal.

Something interesting happened last Sunday. Plurk, a new social network, grew it's subscriber base from a handful of beta users to over 2,000 in one day. Since then they've continued to grow exponentially. As a marketer, and one of the 2,000+, I think it's been a fascinating process to watch. In this one week we've seen some very effective marketing strategies in action. Back in March I shared my reflections on social media networking and marketing, but that was more a tale of slow growth. Plurk's rapid growth gives us a chance to look at some of the techniques they used and see how effective they can be.

Social media marketing, like other forms of viral marketing, depends on getting your customer base to help market your product or service by spreading the word among their friends. But, as with any type of marketing campaign, it helps to have a good product and a keen understanding of your target market. Plurk has both (you can learn more about the service in the Plurk resources list at the end of this entry).

Attract the attention of the media & influential users in your target audience.

Plurk did both by attracting the attention of Leo Laporte, who is both a popular technology journalist and a very active social media user—as is of this writing Leo is the most followed person on Twitter with over 41,418 followers. Last Sunday, Leo sent Plurk invitations out to his friends and followers on Twitter and Pownce and spread the word through his various media enterprises such as TWiT.TV.

When I saw the invitation last Sunday I paused briefly and asked myself, "Do I really need to go experiment with yet another social media service?" The fact that it came from Leo Laporte—rather than someone with less credibility—influenced my decision. New services pop up all the time, but if Leo had singled it out, it was probably worth exploring. So I clicked the link and there I was on Plurk.

Make it easy and compelling for new users to invite more new users.

Social networks are only interesting if you know other people, hence the term: social. After spending a few minutes exploring the service it was time to acquire more friends. In this world the best way to do that is to recruit the friends you have on other social media sites. These early adopters are more likely to play with the new toys than are your friends from the real world.

Plurk made this very easy. In addition to providing the usual "invite the friends from your e-mail address book" interface, they also provide an invitation link that you can post on your blog or other social networks. I posted mine on Pownce and FriendFeed and people started joining up. Others on Pownce and Twitter did so too. Within hours Plurk was switching servers to handle the load. (If you would like to join in the fun, here is your invitation to join us on Plurk.)

Keep them coming back for more.

Social media users aren't so much fickle as they are demanding. With so many services available, and only limited time to use them, most users stick with the 1-3 services that help them with their own goals and productivity. If a service like Plurk offers more useful features it may draw some of the crowd away from others that are lacking such features or that experience a lot of downtime.

For users to understand these features you have to get them involved fast and early—and keep them coming back for more. In doing so you will create a usage habit.

After reaching 25 Karma points I was able
to upgrade from the "rabid dog" to the
"mutant fish."

The Plurk team understood this from the start. They've included a feature called Karma that induces people to Plurk actively—and often—to accumulate Karma points. By inviting more friends and posting messages users can reach certain Karma levels that give them additional features such as the ability to pick from more choices of Plurk mascot creatures (curious critters that sit on your home stream) or additional emoticons one can include in posts.

While these features aren't necessary to the Plurk experience, they do make it more fun. The goal of accumulating Karma also taps into the competitive streak of social media users—many of whom actively try to get their stories on the front page of Digg, acquire the most followers on Twitter, and so forth. Already I've seen numerous posts from users comparing Karma points.

Conclusions

In the right market, social media marketing—in combination with a useful product, site or service—can be very effective. While I don't know how many users are on Plurk as of today, Alexa rankings show that their page rank has gone up by 619,776 in the past three months, while the percentage of global Internet users on the service increased by 2,490%.

Will this growth continue? Who knows? Perhaps in three months time we'll all be using some other cool service with a funny name, but for now Plurk's marketing efforts seem right on track.

Plurk Resources

• Plurk
• Plurk: It's Like Twitter, but Newer
• Plurk: Press/Media/Plurkalicious Goodness
• Plurk & Twitter: Two Very Different Communities
• Plurk takes on Twitter, Pownce
• Plurk: Unique or Just Another Twitter Clone?
• Top 10 Plurk Users Statistics—What’s the Karma Algorithm
• What is Plurk?

Social Media & Marketing Resources

• How to Avoid Marketing to Yourself
• Micro-blogging a hit with Web 2.0 crowd
• PR Tips for Startups - The Director's Cut
• Social Media Today
• Videos: When Social Media enters Popular Culture

June 10th update

As of this evening, according to Plurk Top Users there are 7,651 Plurkers. Thus the group has almost quadrupled since Sunday.

"Machines Like Us is dedicated to keeping you informed about the latest research in the areas of evolution, cognition, artificial life and artificial intelligence."

"Tech Dispenser is Computerworld's human powered technology blog network and news aggregator."

ScienceBlogs aggregates over 60 bloggers writing about science, education and related fields.

"Createxchange is a beta project, syndicating the best design blogs the world has to offer."

Lately I've noticed that I've been subscribing to more and more blog networks/aggregators. As a reader I like these because they help me discover blogs I might not have heard of otherwise. As a blogger and marketer I like the aggregators of which I'm a part or a similar reason; they put my blog in front of new readers—readers who already have shown an interest in my topic.

What is a blog network or blog aggregator?

The term "aggregator" is usually used to refer to tools or software, such as Google Reader, that aggregate RSS feeds to which you subscribe. For today's discussion, I'm instead referring to topically aggregated sites. Using this definition, a blog network or aggregator is a Web site that aggregates posts from multiple blogs into one central location. Simple aggregators can be made using tools such as Yahoo pipes to combine the RSS feeds from multiple blogs. More full-featured aggregators can be programmed to not only pull in the feeds from multiple sources but to also organize and archive them in a way that allows users to search or explore by keyword tags, author, blog name, date, etc.

Blog network and aggregator are often used interchangeably, but there can be some differences. Networks are usually composed of member bloggers who have joined the network to share their posts. Some networks, such as REALNEO, provide multi-authored group blogging within their own interface—rather than by aggregating individual blogs—while some aggregators simply pull in feeds from related blogs without active participation from the original writers. There are also networks that post only selected articles from their participating authors in order to focus on very particular topics.

As is true with any site, an aggregator is only as good as the content it presents. Ideally a good aggregator will pool together high-quality content from blogs that are topically or otherwise related. Well produced aggregators are like specialty stores offering a fine selection of a certain type of product. Just as one might go to a bakery, such as Lucy's Sweet Surrender, for a selection of desserts, one might go to Food Candy for a selection of posts from food blogs.

Finding good aggregators and blog networks

As aggregators have become more common, they're relatively easy to find via Google or your preferred search engine. If you search on the term "aggregator" plus a topically relevant word or phrase you are likely to find a relevant site. If nothing comes up, try combining your search term with "blog network." If you are already reading a number of blogs in your area of interest, you may find that some are already participating in an aggregating network/site. Try looking in their sidebars or links pages to see if they are participating in such a site. Professional associations, both academic and otherwise, may also aggregate content from their members. If you belong to such organizations, peruse their Web sites to see if they offer such a service.

Joining a blog network

If you have a well-established blog with a clear editorial theme you may well be ready to join a network. First find a few blog networks that fit your subject area. Read a number of the entries to get a sense of the writing styles and the breadth and depth of the subjects covered. If you think that your blog would be a good fit, contact the maintainers. Many networks will provide a submission form for prospective members. Some networks are highly selective, only selecting blogs that meet certain quality or topical requirements, while others may accept any blog pertinent to the subject area. When submitting your blog, take care to provide the required information and provide a good description of your content. Before submitting your blog, re-read your entries, checking your spelling, grammar and content just as you might if submitting an article for a professional journal or magazine.

Help! I didn't join this network, but they're aggregating my content! Is that legal? Ethical?

The first time I saw one of my blog entries republished on someone else's blog—without the proper attribution—I got a bit miffed. I ranted and raved at my friends about intellectual property, ethics and so forth. I composed angry letters in my head. I imagined my lawyer friends composing angry letters for me. Since then this has happened a few times, but I've mellowed out about it. Typically this happens with sites that are trying to make money by repurposing other people's content and selling advertising. Also typically the sites are a design nightmare, the content is mangled and mutilated, and they have very low rankings in Google, Technorati, etc. Most of these sites don't last because they don't provide anything useful to their readers. Their content seems to include a bit of everything and entries are truncated. So if any reader happens to stumble upon them, they'll probably have to click on the header to read the full article. In most cases that will bring them back to my blog, because I've included the link in my entry headers.

Legally and ethically this sort of thing gets a bit murky. I expect I could do a whole series of entries on this issue alone. But as a blogger who has produced an RSS feed—designed to be read through RSS readers, shared via Google Reader Share pages, republished via Facebook, Tumblr and the networks to which I belong—I think the question is more about usage. Obviously I expect my content to be shared, I just have certain expectations of how this should be done.

When I share other people's entries via my Google Share page, I'm promoting them as something worth reading, just as I would be if I were simply linking to their content. Google takes the content directly from the author feeds and clearly displays the original source and author. I think that attribution makes the difference. If someone aggregates my content in a manner that makes authorship and source clear, with a link to the original article, then readers will clearly understand the source was me. If they like the content they may visit and/or subscribe to my blog directly and I'll have gained a new reader. So from a marketing standpoint, being aggregated—whether I did it on purpose or not—serves my own goals as well as the goals of the aggregator. (This issue gets murky again if the aggregating site generates ad revenue, but let's leave that discussion for another day.)

Aggregation matches bloggers with their target audience.

As often as we talk about search engine optimization, social media marketing and so forth, our primary marketing goal is to put our content in front of readers who care about our subject matter. Having your blog included in an aggregated site on your topic does just that. Readers who subscribe or visit that site have already shown an interest in your area. They are far more likely to become long-term readers than will the teenager who found your site on Google after you mentioned Britney Spears three times in your entry on hadron super colliders.

Blog Network and Aggregator Resources

• Blog Network Watch
• Bloggers Creating Networks (NPR)
• Intranet 2.0: Blog Networks, Social Bookmarking, Mash-Ups And Wikis
• Should Newspapers Become Local Blog Networks?
• Why I Don’t Like Blog Networks

The Web Development Blog is aggregated in Planet Case, The Cleveland Web Standards Association, Blog High Ed, and other sites of which I may not be aware.

These days everyone seems to be talking about social networking and/or social media marketing. Until fairly recently these were topics for tech nerds and Web marketers, but now more and more people are wondering how they can use Facebook to market their programs or products, or how Twitter can be leveraged as a tool for campus communication. I don't have an immediate answer to such questions, but I thought this would be a good time to reflect a bit on what I've learned about social media.

Online social media marketing and networking aren't really that new. People have been connecting via blogs for several years now, and even before the World Wide Web, people were connecting on Usenet News, listservs or other services. What's new is the array of social/Web 2.0 tools now available to us. Today we have services available that will allow us to make "friends" online with whom we can:

• share and organize our bookmarks via services such as de.licio.us or ma.gnolia,
• send short messages via Twitter or generate discussions and share files and links via Pownce,
• recommend articles and sites on Digg, StumbleUpon or reddit,
• network with like-minded souls and share best practices through topically centered networks, such as University Web Developers on Ning,
• compare music tastes on last.fm or book suggestions on goodreads,
• archive, share and discuss photos on Flickr and Zooomr,
• share personal information, promote bands, products or services on MySpace, publish status updates, join groups and become zombies on Facebook,
• ponder intellectually meaty issues on Big Think,
• connect with fellow bloggers on MyBlogLog and find out which bloggers are linking to your blog on Technorati, and even
• create cartoons on Bitstrips.

These are but a fraction of the options available in the social media world of Web 2.0. From the descriptions alone, it is easy to see how many of these could play into our marketing strategies. After all, what organization wouldn't want its public sites being shared online?

Social media marketing: online word-of-mouth

Whether people are buying a new shampoo or deciding on a doctoral program in biomedical engineering, they will weigh the opinions of friends and colleagues more heavily than the brochure they received in the mail. This doesn't mean that we no longer need brochures, just that online word-of-mouth and viral marketing can often serve to enhance our other marketing strategies.

Of course the trick with this is the same as it always has been; word-of-mouth referrals are driven by satisfied customers, not marketers. We can pave the way and create opportunities to make this happen more easily, but we can't put words in people's mouths or on their social networks.

For example, I can't just go digging cool news stories from Case Western Reserve and expect everyone to follow suit unless I develop a reputation for digging worthwhile reading material. To do that I have to become a more active member of the digg community where I make connections, digg the recommendations of others and recommend pages that I think my followers will like. That sort of activity takes more time than most of us have (including me—one does need to sleep after all) and for many organizations spending time on such activities is just not cost effective.

If marketing is the only reason you are considering social media, then it may not work out unless you've got the resources to implement it and a product or service that people like to talk about. But if networking is your goal, then you may get some marketing benefits as a by-product of your other activities. If you're a faculty member making connections with peers in your field via Facebook, sharing sites on de.licio.us or Stumbling your colleague's research articles you could find your peers reciprocate by sharing links to your articles, blogs or Web sites as well. This isn't a matter of quid pro quo, it's more like link karma. Those who respect your work will link to you as you do for them. It happens on social networks just as it does via phone calls or e-mails.

As a result you could soon discover that your sites are getting more traffic, your articles are reaching a wider audience and you're meeting more peers with whom you can share best practices on polymer research, collaborate on a cognitive science study, discuss new insights into Proust, or whatever else may be of interest.

Marketing impact of my social media activity

Last July when I wrote Web 2.0 & Social Networking can enhance "findability", I was just beginning to experiment more actively with social media. I was already blogging, commenting on other blogs, sharing photos on Flickr and tracking blog reactions on Technorati. I just wasn't doing it proactively. Since then I've joined more networks and spent many a night online connecting with Web developers, designers, bloggers, marketers and other like-minded souls all over the world. I started this primarily to learn more about social media. I kept with it because I made some great friends who shared some great ideas and sites. And somehow, in the process, readership of this blog increased substantially.

Between July and December of 2007 subscribers to the blog (those reading via RSS feed) increased by 55%. Unique visitors to the site, # of visits and page views each increased by more than 200%. While readership has risen steadily since I started the blog in 2005, this was a noticeable upturn.

If I'd set out on my experiment with only a marketing goal in mind, I don't know that it would have worked out so well. As I've since discovered the key is in making connections—which can only be done by becoming a participating member of whatever community you join. But if you find a community of interest, whether pertaining to your research, work or hobbies, there are many benefits to be had.

Social Media Resources

The following articles related to this topic weren't found through Google; they were either written or recommended by people I've met through social networking.

• Cultural Voyeurism and Social Media
• Recruiting through social networks
• Social Media is About Sociology Not Technology
• Social Media Marketing & Optimization
• Social Survey: Del.icio.us
• Social Survey: StumbleUpon

Postscript

As another result of social media networking, the Web Development Blog is now a member of BlogHighEd, a blogger network covering a vast array of topics pertaining to higher education and related fields.