Recently, I was speaking to another web-working type about his company’s name - which I really liked, by the way. The name included “Social” in it. He said he’s been hearing mixed things about the name.
“Someone told me that ’social’ is so over,” he said, lamenting that his company name may already be dated.
Is “Social” already over? That’s news to me. Those immersed in web work may be sick of the (over)use of the word “social,” particularly if, like me, they’ve been working in the social media space back before anyone called it “social.”
Back in 1995, we called it “community” and “communication.” Heck, we all became social online when we first realized we could communicate with others via our computers on traditional phone lines. Out on the speaking circuit, I talked about how the Internet was all about “connection - not just connecting us to information but also connecting us to people, to one another.” Sure, we didn’t have the powerful sharing tools that we have today and social networks weren’t even a glimmer on the horizon. Does anyone remember Andrew Weinreich’s “failed” online community SixDegrees.com that paved the way for LinkedIn and the like? That was a social media before it was called social media.
So is “Social” just 2008’s buzzword and on its way out?
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Working with social media poses a considerable problem.
In most cases, social networks were not designed specifically with professional applications in mind. Look at MySpace and Facebook, two of the real heavy hitters. Both essentially began as places for friends and family to connect and share. As if it weren’t hard enough to focus on work, if you’re business uses social media, your work tools are designed to distract.
Enter the aggregator. One-stop shopping for all your social networks, or at least those it supports. The hope is that you can eliminate the dreaded window Cycle.
You know the one; you alt-tab, Exposé or click your way through a number of browser windows/tabs and applications, obsessively checking for updates in each. But do aggregators really save you time and attention? Here’s a look at some services, and my experiences with them.
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I’ve been hearing a lot from fellow Web workers about their long-term clients who are resistant to change.
“They don’t want to start a blog,” one says.
“They are afraid of RSS feeds,” says another.
“They don’t even know about MySpace or Facebook,” declares yet another.
Are we all just too “into it” to remember that our clients are often way far away from it?
I’ve been lucky in the last year or so to have some clients who trust me implicitly to lead them down the right path toward enhancing and augmenting their online communications with social media tools. Others, however, dismiss it because it is just so far out of their realm that they would rather put off the discussion than try to understand the implications of a blog or a Twitter account to communicate their message. In some cases, I’ve been able to sneak in a few social media tools with positive results, however, I admit this isn’t very strategic.
Here are some things I’ve thought about or observed in terms of handling the reluctant social media client.
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As a web worker, I have clients who are always looking for new and more affordable ways to market what they do. I’m also faced with the constant need to better promote what I’m doing to continue to grow my business. The landscape on the web is undergoing a deep and vast transformation because of social media, and it is affecting the way we market what we do. Public relations will never be the same.
Two years ago, a company called Shift Communications introduced the concept of social media releases that incorporated social networks, microblogs, audio and video elements into text releases. A year later, they expanded their concept to include social media newsrooms, spiffing up the traditional text-heavy online newsroom with more multimedia bells and whistles. PitchEngine is a freemium Web app and hosting service that helps non-techies - and even non-PR-types - to build their own social media releases and social media newsrooms.
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I recently read an article by Social Media strategist Chris Brogan in which he talked about how to Reach Outside Your Fishbowl to Build Community. He says that by reaching out to disparate audiences, you can find those who may not have exposure to you otherwise.
This is great advice and got me thinking about how we can also take advantage of our personal interests and dive deeper into our existing groups for the same purpose, how to use our multiple fishbowls.
Networking is all about building relationships, but who says these relationships have to originate around our area of business? How can we harness the networks that exist for our personal interests as well?
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How many social networks and Web 2.0 tools are enough? I clearly don’t know when enough is enough. What if the one I don’t join is the one that will truly change my life/work/future?
1. Checked Twitter. This is like my first cup of coffee, standing by the watercooler, with my Twitterfriends.
2. Went to Upcoming. I was curious what kinds of conferences my friends had listed so I could consider attending a few this year. Ended up adding a dozen new friends to my account.
3. Looked at Facebook. I wanted to see who had RSVP’d to my Second Life event and a real world event I’m promoting. I also used Evite for the real world event because the potential attendees aren’t all on Facebook.
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I’ve been working with clients to set up social media “satellite sites” as I call them to extend their brand and take advantage of the exponential power of social networking for reaching out to consumers. The question I hear time and time again is “How in the world can I manage all these social networks if I can’t even get to the rest of my work?”
I know we are all crunched for time. Sometimes, I don’t even know how I keep up with all of my writing and blogging, client projects and social networking sites. But I have found some cool “social aggregation broadcasting tools” that are making at least some of my tasks easier to handle.
What is a Social Aggregation Broadcasting Tool?
Okay, I have to admit, I just made that term up but I think it covers what I’m trying to convey. There are tools out there that help you aggregate your social networking sites for the purpose of broadcasting a message to more places with fewer steps hence Social Aggregation Broadcasting Tools (SABT? lol!).
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As I search high and low for tools to make my work easier, more efficient and more productive, I start having dreams about the Perfect Web App. I become obsessed, thinking through the details of the features, functionality and even toying with names.
Unfortunately, I’m not a programmer, so the ideas for these apps simply take up valuable space in my brain. So I thought I’d do a brain dump of a few of them to make some space. When someone actually comes up with a Web App that gives you more brain capacity, let me know. I’ll sign up for the beta. But until then, here are two of the apps I wish existed (and if they do, please point me to them).
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