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While I don’t have a crystal ball, here are some developments that I think are worthy of our attention and will affect how we do things in the social mediasphere over the next few years. Many of the things on this list will not be news to the very well-informed social media consultant types who live and breathe this stuff. But for the rest of us, there are seeds of opportunity here that should not be missed.

1. MySpace: CEO Leaves; MySpace will die. Last year, I was telling my clients “We are cautiously optimistic that MySpace (GigaOM Pro company profile) will make a comeback because their new CEO is a Facebook co-founder.” Scratch that. I think MySpace is about to go the way of Friendster, although it is still a player in the entertainment space. Because Facebook doesn’t allow flexbility and customization, I’m going to miss MySpace. But now I wonder: Who is going to be the next MySpace? Virb? Bebo? (And don’t underestimate LinkedIn.)
2. Virtual Goods: Insane, but insanely popular. The creation and selling of virtual goods and gifts makes absolutely no sense to people who just use the Internet as a basic communications tool. Try telling someone who isn’t really into Facebook that they could buy a virtual bouquet of flowers for 99 cents and send them to a friend — they’d look at you like you were mad. But with virtual goods as an industry already raking in the billions of dollars worldwide and over a billion in the U.S. alone (source: “Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market, 2009 – 2010″), how can anyone ignore them? I’m not saying everyone needs to make and use virtual goods, but there is opportunity here for both marketing and revenue. Have you even thought about how you might be able to leverage virtual goods? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): How the Next Zynga Could Reinvent Social Gaming
3. Gaming: Not just for kids anymore. I think the very fact that the largest player base of passive online games is women flies in the face of the typical view that games are for kids. According to Nielsen Entertainment in August 2009, of the 117 million active gamers in the U.S., 56 percent play games online and 64 percent of those online gamers are female. And the revenues generated from online games is enormous and growing. Do not underestimate the power of games and gaming — and not just the marketing and revenue opportunities, but also the learning opportunities as well in the form of fun quizzes and polls. Have you used gaming yet in a social media marketing campaign?
4. Twitter: Still transforming communications. Back in 2008, I wrote about Twitter’s impact on the fundamental ways we communicate and the way new tools and applications are being developed, but it continues to grow and evolve. How has Twitter helped you lately?
5. Niche networks: A marketer’s secret weapon. Whether you choose Ning.com or KickApps or any of the other “white label” customizable social network-building platforms, the concept of creating a “gated”online community that is narrow in focus is smart and potentially powerful. The concept isn’t really that far removed from hosting an online messaging board in the early days of the web. If you held the keys to the gate of a more private, closed or niche community, you had everything from an instant focus group to a band of passionate buzz agents on your hands — if you knew how to properly leverage the community participation. Fast forward to today and the tools ca now give your members integrated communications, networking, publishing and social tools — brilliant. What niche networks are you participating in or do you run?
6. Augmented reality. Sounds sci-fi, but it’s really here. I’m having a hard time describing Augmented Reality to people who haven’t seen it (if you haven’t seen it in action, these infographics from GigaOM might help). The reaction isn’t just “what in the world?” but “who cares about that stuff?” AR uses simply boggle the mind, and I plan to explore more of that in this column soon. I do wish we had a better term for it, though (like “data overlay” or “overscreen view”) so it didn’t have such a sci-fi feel to it. What potential uses for AR are getting you fired up? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Augmented Reality: Lots of Promise, Lots of Hurdles.
7. Google Buzz: Pay attention, even if you don’t care. I am one of the gazillion people who currently do not care about Google Buzz, apart from the fact that just because Google did this it means something in terms of the tools we’ll be using in the coming years. Right now, I feel like Google has the means to just throw tech spaghetti on the virtual walls of our work and lives to see what sticks. Anything it does has major significance and impact, even if it fails. So pay attention as you scratch your head. How is Google Buzz changing the way you communicate, or is it? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Google Buzz’s True Home Is in the Enterprise
8. Mobile: Be there. I don’t know about you, but I consider my iPhone to be a mini computer and Wi-Fi device first and phone a distant second. I’m never normally an early early adopter because I’m too busy to keep up most of the time, but I will be one of the first to buy the iPad, because it looks to me like a bigger iPhone, and I rely on my iPhone in ways I have never relied on my computer or my regular cell phone. My entire concept of connectivity and my access to everything has changed so dramatically since I got a smartphone that I know I can never go back to the old ways. What forays into mobile marketing are on your radar for 2010? Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes

I could also add the concept of location to this list, but I’ll leave that for another column.

What developments in social media are knocking your socks off?

Photo by stock.xchng user bigevil600

My feelings about location-based social networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, BrightKite and the like have been mixed. I’ve avoided them to date because of that knee-jerk “it’s too creepy” reaction that one gets when thinking of letting others — especially strangers — know one’s exact location. Maybe it’s because, frankly, many women I know (myself included) have been stalked.

But lately, because of Fourquare, I’ve been looking at location-based social networks in a different way. I recently wrote about Foursquare on my personal blog and concluded that the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks.

Here’ s my take on the benefits of location-based social networks like Foursquare from a work standpoint:

1. Connecting. With business travel, particularly to conferences, I find that I often don’t even know some of my friends and colleagues are in the vicinity. Foursquare notices that appear from friends on the network allow serendipitous discovery and can lead to impromptu meet-ups that can prove fruitful for work.
2. Socializing. A few years ago, Twitter took SXSW by storm, with attendees utilizing the microblogging system to track people down. I’m wondering if Foursquare will be this year’s Twitter at SXSW, or maybe it is already over in those more techie circles and everyone has moved on to the next app. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing when someone I know is at a nearby cafe or restaurant. I’m assuming it would then be socially acceptable to just show up and say “hi,” since they’ve publicly announced their location.
3. Discovering. Gone are the days of being on a business trip and having to rely on the concierge for restaurant suggestions or the wait staff for meal recommendations. I’m already enjoying the Foursquare tips that show up for establishments nearby. I’ve also used Around Me on recent trips, but Foursquare’s recommendations of friends popping up when I’m in a new area is far more compelling than simple listings.
4. Promoting. What is really interesting about an application like Foursquare is how local businesses can leverage it to attract more customers. The concept that Foursquare members can get discounts and perks from businesses by becoming “mayor” or frequenting a place often is genius.

In an age of marketing when consumers are digesting information in new ways, taking advantage of hybrid applications that combine online and offline elements is smart business. For example, Yelp’s Monocle mode augmented reality feature is dramatically changing the ways we think of “online,” “offline” and “location.”

While privacy and safety issues still exist with any GPS-enabled application that lets you broadcast your stats to your friends or the world, I think we are going to location-based apps continue to become more mainstream. And I, for one, am eager to see where else this can take us, and how it will affect the way we network and work.

How do you feel about location-based social networks, and how do you leverage them for your work?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: “Call it Real-Time, Squared, or NewNet, The Web Is Changing“

Peeking into another person’s social media approach can give you ideas on how to adjust yours to get the biggest bang. So in this post, I’m going to share my social media process. While social media is my primary marketing tool, plenty of others spend more hours social networking than I do and for different reasons. For me, social media keeps my name out there, so people remember I’m here and available for hire. Based on these two requirements, I do social networking activities at least a couple of hours a day five times a week, which comprises a mix of the following:

• Doing social networking at the same time every day. When I make something a habit, it becomes easier to stick with it and do it on a regular basis. I always start my mornings with social media and reviewing emails. I do another check around lunch and sometimes in the evenings. This schedule ensures I cover a variety of time zones. If all your clients are local or within the same country, you may only need to sign on once or twice a day.
• Posting tweets spread throughout the day with a scheduling application. There’s some controversy surrounding automated tweets. But there’s a difference between just saying something without mentioning anyone and replying. My scheduled tweets come from responding to other people’s tweets. It doesn’t have to be an instant reply because most of us watch for mentions of our names. Rather than having a whole bunch of live tweets at 7:00 am, noon and evening, I schedule them.
• Joining the right Twitter chats. I also join several Twitter chats every week, which run for an hour on average. Chats give me an opportunity to get to know people better and have some intelligent discussion. I select the chats to attend based on the topic and theme. Some chats have a different theme (announced in advance) every time. If a chat interferes with something else, I skip it. You can also multitask while chatting.
• Reviewing Facebook updates once a day. Unless you change the settings, most of us receive updates when we post new Facebook statuses and people reply. So responding immediately isn’t important unless it’s related to an event. Once or twice a day, I review the feed on my home page and reply as needed. Since Facebook is less noisy than Twitter, it’s easy to see a few hours’ worth of updates in one sitting. If I write a tweet that would also suit my Facebook audience, I send it to Facebook by adding the “#fb” hashtag using the Selective Tweets application. I don’t send every Twitter update to Facebook because it’s a different kind of audience and it annoys some people. I obviously like and use Twitter, but I don’t like reading constant tweets in Facebook.
• Updating my LinkedIn status a few times a week. Rather than checking LinkedIn daily, I just send tweets that contain the hashtag “#in” to update my LinkedIn status. You can turn on this feature in LinkedIn. I also visit LinkedIn about once a week to review updates and questions and answers.
• Writing at least two blog entries per week. This keeps my site fresh while sharing free information, expertise and personality. It’s my home on the Internet.
• Reading other people’s blogs. I browse blogs through links in Twitter or by checking people’s Twitter bios. This makes it easy to read a diversity of blogs. With many knowledgeable people out there, I like to mix it up and meet more people. I do this a few times a week. If my schedule is tight, I cut the blog hopping and commenting.

Before figuring out your process for social media, you might want to figure out how much time you should spend on social networking. Also, be aware of your clients’ preferences to make sure you go to the places where you’re likely to find them.

Notice I mentioned Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs while omitting video networks like YouTube. But this mix of tools might not always be the same. Social media isn’t going away soon, but the players might change. Besides, you might work in an industry or profession that has a social network worth joining, or video networking is a big thing with you.

How do you make the most of social networking?

Photo credit: Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo

The Social Networking Time Factors

So what factors affect your decision in figuring out how much time to devote to social media? Ask yourself these questions.

1. Do you use social media for personal uses, business uses or both?
2. Do you work for yourself or someone else?
3. What is social networking’s role in your marketing activities?
4. What are your current paid activities?
5. Are you earning enough money?
6. Do you have enough work?
7. Where do you find your potential clients?
8. What is your business and personal schedule like?
9. Can you make social media pay?
10. How much free information can you give way?

I spend about two hours a weekday on average doing social networking, and it’s my number one marketing activity.

How to Determine the “Right” Amount of Time for You

You’ll need to record the amount of time you spend on a few things. Plenty of time tracking applications exist for phones, online and desktop use. If you don’t use one yet, do a little research to find one that fits your needs, or just rely on pen and paper.

Track:

1. Time spent on paid work.
2. Time spent on unpaid work-related activities (like social media), broken out by activity.
3. Personal time.

Do this for a week or two. Tracking your time spent on projects is important, but the point of this activity is to see where your time goes for paid, unpaid and personal activities. Don’t break out your time on spent on paid work for the purposes of this exercise. Your result could look like this:

The breakout of your unpaid work-related time could look like this:

What you do with the data depends on the answers to the time factor questions above. For example, if you answered “No” to “Are you earning enough money?” and “Do you have enough paid work?”, you either need to cut down on personal and unpaid time, or spend more time marketing to bring in more work.

Have you seen a pattern in where you find your clients? For me, most come from word-of-mouth recommendations. Social networking supports that by keeping my name out there, so if you find most of your clients this way and need more work you might consider increasing your social media time.

Obviously, the longer you track your time, the better understanding you have of your typical schedule. The more you know, the more you can tweak your schedule to devote your time to go where you need it most. You might consider doing a review of your time spent on a quarterly basis to verify that you have a good balance of all your activities and they’re related to your goals. Be flexible and let your schedule be your guide.

How do you figure out how much time to spend on social networking?

Photo credit: Patrick Nijhuis

Last week, I discussed how you can be both personal and professional in social media:

You can actually be professional and personal at the same time in social media without too much effort. When we talk about “being personal” on social media web sites, I think that many people confuse “personal” with “private.” The reality is that you get to decide what to share and what not to share, so you can still keep most areas of your private life private.

Now, let’s talk about the private information. Sites like Facebook can change their policies at any time to make information that was once private become public. Ed Gubbins on GigaOM Pro (subscription required) points out that “to satisfy their privacy concerns, users will have to take a more sophisticated and hands-on approach to managing their accounts, and that means Facebooking is going to get more complicated.”

For those of us who work mainly online, this means that we need to be especially careful about what we share and how we share it. In general, I don’t share anything that would be devastating if a client, prospective employer or family member read it. In fact, my mom, my sister, other family members and clients all follow my Twitter feed and/or Facebook status, so they see much of what I say online. I’m not going to say anything that would damage those relationships even in areas that seem to be more “private.”

I consider everything that I share online, even in “private” areas,  to be public information. If I would be embarrassed to have a family member or client see it, I don’t post it. Keep those drunken ramblings, too much information (TMI) moments, and other sensitive data off of the social media sites if you need to also maintain your professionalism online.

How do you balance what information you keep private vs. what you post online?

Photo by Flickr user Ted Percival used under Creative Commons.

There are approximately 90 Ning Apps already available in the directory. Everything will be managed by the Tab Manager, which will allow you to control the navigational structure of your Ning network as well as the layout of your shiny new Ning Apps.

These apps are also added to the My Apps area in the Profile View for your members. They can then organize the apps any way they want.

Here’s a peak at some of the Ning Apps (Napps?) available today:

It’s taken a while to get here but this is a smart move on Ning’s part. Facebook and Apple have clearly shown the value and popularity of proving easy access to ready-to-go apps for their platforms, so this news should inject a great deal of excitement throughout the Ning ecosystem.

Let us know what you think of Ning Apps in the comments.

Whenever I use social media tools, I find myself communicating in two languages: English and Tagalog. I use the former to talk to international contacts, and the latter for local contacts. It’s not a strict rule, since I prefer to use English, but there are some cases where sending updates in Tagalog is preferable or unavoidable.

For bilingual web workers, social networking can be a juggling act. How can we interact in one language without alienating part of our audience?

Consider your readers. While most of my English-speaking contacts ignore my Tagalog updates, not all of them easily let it go. From time to time, I receive messages saying “Translation please!” when I write something in Tagalog. It doesn’t matter if I’m just referring to my breakfast or something my cat did — people who aren’t familiar with the language might be curious about your message.

I don’t seem to have that problem when writing in English, since most Filipinos are fluent in the language. But there are times when writing in English feels unnatural, so I go with my gut and write something the way I would say it.

The primary thing we should think about, then, is our audience. Who are your contacts and how intent are they on reading what you write? Who do you want to engage in conversation?

Keep in mind, though, that you can’t please everybody. Just do what feels right for you and your most valued contacts.

Use different accounts for personal and professional interaction. Since most of my Filipino contacts are friends and relatives, I usually make separate accounts — or use different social media tools entirely — to communicate with them. Having different accounts makes it easier to have complete separation of your work and your social contacts. The disadvantage of doing this is that you have more social media channels that you need to keep up with, but with a good aggregator you can keep everything in one interface.

Take advantage of groups and filtering. An alternative to the above technique is to group your contacts and filter your outgoing updates based on these groups. Still, not all social networks have robust filtering features for your outgoing messages. Facebook, for example, only allows you to filter based on content type. You can customize which groups can see your status updates in general, but you can’t do this for each specific status update. Twitter has even more basic filtering: you can only choose between public or private updates.

I found an interesting workaround to bilingual Twittering from MMMotion. Basically, the trick is to create a separate account for updates in your local language and take advantage of the reply feature. Read the blog post for more details.

I realized that it’s also useful to start each Tagalog update with a phrase like “For my Filipino clients” or “Question for Filipino Web Workers.” A technique like this lets everyone know who the update is for.

Translate your input. You can also translate non-English updates so that your international contacts feel included in some way. You can start with basic greetings like “Good morning!” and “Have a nice day!” Alternatively, you can type local aphorisms and their translations to give your international contacts a peek at your culture. It might not be practical to translate long posts or updates, but the effort to reach out in this way will always be appreciated.

While bilingual social networking has some challenges, it’s still possible to generate engaging discussions without making your profile page look like the Rosetta Stone.

Are you a bilingual web worker? How does this affect the way you use social networking tools?

Image by nookiez from sxc.hu

Step 1: Alert the People You Trust

If you’re worried about the feasibility of your goals, bouncing them off of your closest friends and relatives is a sure way of getting some invaluable early feedback. You probably have some good friends who aren’t afraid to make you look foolish (and, in fact, might relish the opportunity), so you don’t have to worry that they’ll pull punches to spare your feelings. Conversely, if you have a good idea, they won’t summarily cut you down, like some of your more trollish online contacts might.

Your inner circle of real-life peers and confidants will also have a better idea of what you’re realistically capable of. In fact, they might be more aware of your own limitations than you yourself are. Most Internet connections, as familiar with your work as they might be, will likely judge based on the apparent difficulty of the goal in a general sense, without specific reflection on your level of talent, dedication or ability.

Step 2: Keep Your Twitter/Facebook Friends in the Loop

Once your plan has passed muster with those you trust, you can broaden the audience using Twitter and Facebook status updates. Don’t make a huge deal out of it, but do post things like “Starting work on my ABC certification today, wish me luck!” At the very least you should secure some words of encouragement.

Most likely, depending on the size and nature of your networks, there will be others among your friends and contacts who’ve tried to achieve the same or similar goals. They’ll be able to offer advice, helpful links, and possibly even prep materials or information sources, depending on what it is you want to accomplish.

Mining your social networks for support is great, but be prepared for challenges, too. Anything from doubt concerning the merits of your chosen goals, to flamebait and personal attacks is possible, but the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, particularly if you’re thick-skinned. Hopefully, you’ve already applied the golden rule of the Internet: Never take anything personally, unless it makes you look good.

Step 3: Broadcast Beyond Your Network

While making the people you know and interact with on a regular basis aware of what you intend to do is the best way to get yourself to stick to your guns, it might not be the most effective method of garnering feedback.

Reaching out to strangers might give you a fresh perspective on what you’re doing, and how to go about doing it. It may also help when your goals are off the beaten track, and therefore less likely to be shared by other individuals in your social circles. To some degree, Twitter will broadcast your plans out to the ether if people are searching for keywords that occur in your tweets, but other alternatives are much more targeted.

MySomeday is a new web app in public beta that is designed specifically to help you share your goals with others in a community setting that will help you garner constructive criticism and words of encouragement. The concept is simple: You post a plan, and other members of the community comment on what you want to do and how you want to do it. You set up steps towards achieving your goal, and then you rate each step in terms of importance and check them off as they’re accomplished. Checking off tasks updates your progress bar, which displays the completion percentage of your overall goal.

Step 4: Stick to It

Just talking about your goals is a sure way to not accomplish what you want to do. Action is the only real solution, but sometimes the key to spurring yourself to act rests outside of yourself. Regardless of whether you draw your inspiration from yourself or others, though, the only way to achieve your goals is to persevere in your pursuit of them. Especially for web workers, using the Internet to garner encouragement might just be the extra push you need to keep your nose to the grindstone.

Does sharing your goals with your network spur you into action?

printfriendly — Make Any Site Printer-Friendly

Many sites nowadays will have a “printer-friendly” button, which often just strips the web page of any fancy CSS and gives you a bare-bones text document that won’t eat up too much of your precious ink or toner. I know that for all the recent web site work I’ve done for clients, I always make sure to include just such a version. Unfortunately, not everyone does the same. For those times when the button is missing, and printing the web page with images, etc., would result in too much of a dent in your ink supplies, there’s printfriendly. All you have to do is enter any URL into the field on its main page, and you immediately get a stripped-down version which you can then print or save as a PDF. Webmasters can also get the code for a printfriendly button to use on their own site, so that they don’t have to code a printer-friendly version for themselves.

Geek Chart — Show Off Where You Share Stuff Online

Ever wonder whether you share more stuff on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or your blog? Geek Chart can help you find out, and then display that info to others in an attractive, easy-to-read pie chart format. Just enter your information for the relevant networks you want to measure (Facebook is unfortunately not yet available), and Geek Chart generates a color-coded pie that shows how much data you have associated with each account.

Mine is currently heavily skewed towards Twitter, but that’s because if you read the fine print, it only takes into consideration your last 30 days of activity. If you spend a lot of time on your social network content, this might be a great way to show visitors to your own page exactly where your attention lies, and what might therefore be the best way to reach you.

trackle — Track Anything, Anywhere on the Web

Google Alerts are a great way to stay up to date with a favorite subject or news category. I have a variety of both blog and news alerts set up so that I receive regular notifications via email when something noteworthy goes on in my areas of interest. Trackle aims to do the same thing, but adds more oomph than Google Alerts is currently capable of.

For example, you can keep abreast of crime in your own neighborhood, or job postings, or even your own web presence (good for those of us who make our business here). Through trackle, you create “tracklets”, or customized web crawlers that return custom information to you based on criteria you specify.

There are tons of pre-made tracklets available to choose from, and you can receive alerts in a number of different ways, including via web through trackle’s own interface, through your phone via SMS, or through email. Also, you can specify the frequency with which you receive updates, and choose to either get them as they occur, or as a collected package once daily.

These tools may not be particularly powerful, nor do they provide any kind of revolutionary service. They do, however, perform small, potentially useful tasks well, and they’re free, which is more than reason enough to consider adding them to your toolbox.

Found any cool tools recently? Let us know in the comments.

I often give advice to people who are interested in starting online businesses. One of my “pupils” (so to speak) is new to social media, but after the recent media Twitter craze, he decided that he was going to use it to promote his site because, “that’s where everyone is.” A couple of days later, he emailed me and said that he wasn’t satisfied with his results, so he decided to follow the advice he read on a blog and try Facebook instead. Again, after only a minimal increase in his traffic, he wrote to me asking, “Have you ever tried StumbleUpon?” My immediate reaction was, “Social media marketing: you’re doing it wrong.”

This problem of constantly flipping tools doesn’t just happen with social media. I’ve had several clients who’ve spent weeks obsessing about Movable Type vs. Blogger vs. Joomla, for example.

So what should you be doing instead of obsessing about the choice of tools?

Define your goals. Goals give you direction, and without them you have no measurement of success. Do you want a one-time spike in your pageviews, or do you want to slowly build your subscriber base? In the end, your tool of choice (and how you’d use it) would depend on the goals you want to accomplish.

As much as possible, choose quantifiable goals so it will be easy to determine whether they’ve been achieved or not.

Find your audience. Who do you want to reach or help with these tools? Where can you find them? Answering these questions in detail will prove to be more helpful than telling all your email contacts to Stumble your latest blog post. Keep it simple. You shouldn’t pick a tool just because it has 500 features while the others have five. Know your needs and look for a tool with features that support those needs; nothing more, nothing less.

Stay authentic. This is especially true if you plan to use  social media tools for marketing. It’s not enough just to have a Twitter account. What’s more important is whether your tweets reflect a consistent, authentic message. It’s easy for people to detect “spammy” self-serving promotion; if you don’t have an authentic message your marketing will be ineffective.

Know when to stop. If it’s obvious that a particular tool or platform doesn’t work, no amount of force or prayer will make it work. When the results fall short of your defined goals, it’s time to either pick a new tool or rethink your strategy. What will you do if your tools don’t work out? Will you ditch them altogether or find another way to make them work?

If you have clients or colleagues who are experiencing “analysis paralysis” when it comes to tool selection, remind them that without a proper strategy, the tool won’t function as well as they expect. After all, what use is a good quality wrench in the hands of a poor mechanic? How did you choose your tools when you were starting out as a web worker? Were you overwhelmed with the number of choices out there?

Image by woodsy from sxc.hu

ConvoTrack is based on the BackType API, an open API for developing applications based on HTTP GET and POST requests. If that sounds awfully techie, ConvoTrack is anything but. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to WebWorkerDaily’s home page: http://webworkerdaily.com/

2. Before the http:// prefix in the address, type in http://convotrack.com/

3. Hit Enter

If you follow those steps, this is the URL that should be in your browser’s address bar when you go to hit Enter: http://convotrack.com/http://webworkerdaily.com/. Soon after you hit Enter, ConvoTrack will automatically present you with a dual-paned view. On the left, you’ll see a running list of posts to social sites ranging from Twitter, to Digg, to FriendFeed, and more. In this example, the posts are chatter that involves WebWorkerDaily. (Give the application a bit of time after you hit Enter for your lookup.)

You can follow the same steps for the URL of any particular post or article online, by simply typing the http://convotrack.com/ prefix in before the URL of the story you’re interested in tracking chatter for. For WebWorkerDaily, a quick glance at the ConvoTrack list tells me that the story on Pogoplug is getting attention on Twitter, as is the story on finding the right people to follow on Twitter. There’s also a bookmarklet available to quickly get at the ConvoTrack list of any page.

Social media sites are now often the places people go to discuss content online, and ConvoTrack is a useful way to get a snapshot of the discussions very quickly. It’s also a polite application that gives you a Close button right on top of the lists it generates. I’m now using it every day.

What do you think of ConvoTrack?

As web workers, we’re no strangers to social networks. In fact, they’re probably part and parcel of what you consider your active working time every day. But how do you use them? Take Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), for instance. He’s fairly direct when it comes to marketing via those channels. In fact, he’s often accused of spamming because of his approach.

The indirect approach, which one might attribute to someone like John Hodgman (@hodgman), basically involves being so interesting, funny, useful, or bizarre that people can’t help but try to find out more about you, and, as a result, the products or services you offer. Key success factors for indirect marketing include not looking like you’re trying to actually sell anything, the art of which is described well in this article at Babeloon.com.

I use indirect marketing as much as the next online worker, but recently I’m more skeptical as to how well that method is actually working. I notice spikes when I post new information, but generally speaking, my social network audience appears to be jaded enough to pass up any links they may come across without direct guidance.

I’ve come up with three theories why my indirect approach might not be that effective. First, it could be that in general, indirect marketing requires a certain degree of authority beforehand to be really effective, which would explain why it works for people like Guy Kawasaki and John Hodgman.

Second, it may be that I’ve split my focus too much, providing so many links on my various social network profiles that people are overwhelmed, can’t detect a sense of priority or importance, and don’t bother to visit any at all. Indirect marketing, though a soft sell, seems to work best when focused and kept simple.

The third, and most cynical theory, is that as internet users become more savvy, they also become more impervious to even indirect approaches, and simply know a soft sell when they see one. If this were true, the logical next step would be to ask “What’s next?” for internet marketing.

What do you think? Is indirect marketing an effective method of promotion for web work? How do you measure the effectiveness of your indirect marketing? What alternatives can you suggest?

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.

I’ve been exploring PitchEngine lately as a tool for both my clients and my own company. PitchEngine elegantly automates the creation of social media press releases and social media newsrooms. The creator of PitchEngine, Wyoming-based marketer Jason Kintzler, really “gets it.” He’s an avid social media fan, a brand manager for a popular outdoors products company Brunton, and leader of the Pitch Engine Ning group where “PR meets social media.” He’s in the thick of the conversation about how consumers are carrying the marketing conversations these days, and PR people need to come to the conversation in smart ways or get left behind.

The Moving Parts of PitchEngine

PitchEngine is first and foremost for the person who wants to build a social media release but doesn’t have the technical skills. You can create as many brand accounts as you want for free. Brands represent you or your clients and projects.

Building a social media release includes integrating a company’s Twitter account, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., as well as easily embedding audio and video. The finished product has all the links and elements easily accessible in and around the main press release text. The release is hosted for free for 30 days and then expires and is no longer available which is a suitable duration for an effective PR campaign, however, also an incentive to purchase a subscription for a more permanent social media newsroom.

Even with the 30-day limit, PitchEngine is also a helpful press release distribution tool. Kintzler is about to announce that Google News is now picking up releases going through their system which gives the free service great reach and online PR cred. The PitchEngine system makes it incredibly easy to distribute your press release into your account on top social media sites including Twitter and Facebook.

Kintzler recently introduced an editable Twitter submission form because he understands that submitting press releases to a conversational community such as Twitter could be considered spam. Instead of just linking to the release, you can modify your message to make it less commercial and more relevant to the conversation.

The Costs and Savings of PitchEngine

Media types can use PitchEngine entirely for free and perform filtered searches for topic areas of interest. They can also sign up for free RSS feeds to continue to monitor for press releases on the topics of their choice.

Social media press releases are free and hosted for 30 days but long-term hosting is available for a subscription of $50 per month or $600 per year in a social media newsroom. Companies, organizations and individuals can link directly to their social media releases or newsrooms on PitchEngine’s site (such as this newsroom for Brunton) or bring the social media release feed into their web site (like Gerber Gear does). If you consider that a single press release sent through a popular wire service such PR Newswire or Business Wire costs $400+ for a single release, this is a phenomenal deal.

Sure, the biggie PR wire services will probably step up as competitors to PitchEngine in the near future but they won’t be able to be as social media savvy, nimble nor as affordable as Kintzler’s venture. There has also been a recent backlash regarding using social media for marketing and public relations as there is bound to be with the adoption of any social platform for commercial purposes. The conversation about social media marketing has only just begun.

How do you feel about using social networks and tools like PitchEngine to market directly to consumers?

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.

4. Fiddled around with Netvibes. I’m still trying to make Netvibes my portal to all my email accounts, important industry news and posts on favorite blogs. Still not integrated into my workflow as I hoped.

5. Posted to HelloTxt. While I also have a Ping.fm account, I’m still partial to HelloTxt for broadcasting messages to relevant social networks. In this case, I was promoting my Second Life event.

6. Posted to my mommy blog. I hadn’t updated in quite a while. My personal blogs tend to suffer as I put al of my blogging energy into my pro-blogging gigs.

7. Added a few contacts on Plaxo Pulse. I’m still on the fence about the value of Plaxo, but it does send me a notice each time someone I know joins and makes it easy for me to connect with them.

8. Accepted some LinkedIn invitations. After all these years, I still love LinkedIn. It isn’t flashy and doesn’t have all the flexibility of other social networks, but my contacts are real (friends or colleagues vs. “friends” and “connections,” high-quality and willing to connect me to other high-quality contacts.

9. Checked on my Meetup Groups. I’m still paying a fee to host Meetup groups and am using it for personal and professional meetings. The site has been helpful with organizing real world events.

10. Posted to BizNik. I’m looking to do more business in Seattle because it is only a 3-hour drive from Alaska. BizNik is a vibrant social network for the self-employed, and I’ve joined the Seattle Community. This time I posted a query looking for a business plan writer for a client of mine.

11. Reviewed my Filtrbox results. In a constant effort to filter down the deluge of industry news, I’m using a combination of Google Alerts, Filtrbox and Snackr. And still…a deluge.

12. Added some friends on 12seconds.tv. Just 12 seconds for a video? Harder than Twittering. But starting to use it to promote a new video microblog I’m producing with a friend. About wine. Sure, it is for business.

13. Uploaded images and video to Flickr. Attended a political rally and did a little on-the-spot documentation. Put everything on my Flickr page to share. Posted some of it to Twitter and one of my blogs.

14. Synced my iPod Touch. Having trouble getting some apps to work and getting videos to play. Syncing a few times to try to fix it.

All in a day’s work. And this is only a small glimpse.

How many social networks and Web 2.0 tools are enough? I think the main criteria for managing your social media should be asking yourself:

• Do you get tangible, frequent benefits that translate into dollars?
• Do they help you work more efficiently or network more efficiently?
• Do they enhance your work and productivity or detract from it?
• Do they reduce your feeling of isolation and connect you to the people and information you need to work better, faster, smarter?

As long as you are answering yes to all or most of the above, you should be okay. For now.

Image via Wikipedia

I can’t get the Who’s song “Going Mobile” out of my head, and it is driving me crazy.

The other day I came across VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2008 list of companies and have been stressing out ever since. Combine that with attending the latest BlogHer conference and watching several power mobile device users in action (Blackberries implanted in hand, fingers flying at breakneck speed), and no wonder I am starting to feel the pressure of change.

As a Web worker, I can see that my industry is already moving toward being at the forefront of adopting mobile technologies, but I’m not sure exactly what that mobile work looks like.

I’m even less sure how to equip myself properly to handle the technical requirements of mobile work as I’m still trying to get my mobile communications equipment up to snuff. I think I need a technology consultant who can assess my current devices, suggest affordable upgrades, and provide me with a strategy that can help me avoid penalties and too many additional fees from my telecommunications companies not to mention some advice on how to adapt to mobile work. Otherwise, this move toward mobile is going to break my bank not to mention blow my mind.

Can I really go mobile?

Now before you start labeling me a Luddite or of a generation that cannot adopt well to technological change, let me just lay out for you my current tech equipment landscape so you can see my quandry.

My Equipment

1. Two cell phones. When I moved to Alaska, I kept my Wyoming cell phone through Verizon, partly because I still have clients in Wyoming and partly because I didn’t want to change my number. I got a second cell phone through an Alaska company so I could have a local number for my business. I can’t get out of either contract without hundreds of dollars worth of penalties, but I just managed to upgrade the Verizon phone to the LG EnV2 which isn’t even available here in Alaska through the local telecoms. And since I’m in Alaska, I’m unable to use any of the photo or video features on the phone so upgrading from a bare bones phone to a sexy one with a keyboard and camera may have been a bad strategy. My local cell phone is a bare bones LG with zero bells or whistles, only capable of calls and SMS.

2. An iPod Touch. This is a very recent purchase and was meant to be simply an iPod upgrade, but in truth, it was due to iPhone envy. I can’t move to AT&T without a severe penalty so I got the next best thing. Unfortunately, without the cell service, an iPod Touch is mostly inert because even though wifi is proliferating, it isn’t always free and isn’t ubiquitous enough to make the Touch useful in most settings. And in the settings where there is free wifi, I usually have my MacBook with me which, let’s face it, is easier to work on than a hand held device, at least for me.

My Web Work

Looking what I do most days, I can break my work down as follows:

1. Writing. I write for web sites, and I still write for print magazines, but at least I can email my drafts into all of my editors.

2. Blogging. I post all of the blog posts I write, although some clients still have publishing control.

3. Social Media Marketing. On any given day, I’m writing proposals and plans for clients as well as helping to implement plans including setting up social networking accounts, posting multimedia content to social networks, and linking a client’s social networks together for more efficient marketing.

4. E-Coordination. As I continue to hire and work with virtual teams, I’m doing almost all of my coordination via web sites like Basecamp.

5. E-Communications. I’m barely scratching the surface of my email inboxes these days and seeking new ways to manage the constant stream of email communications between clients, vendors, editors, team members, and independent contractors, not to mention my subscriptions to industry newsletters and RSS feeds.

A Mobile Reality Check

Here’s how I see the mobile aspects of my current work:

1. Mobile Writing. I have finally gotten used to composing all of my content on a computer using a laptop keyboard and screen. Now you’re telling me I’m going to have to squint to see my content on a miniscule screen and relearn keyboarding on a tiny excuse for a keyboard? I’m already in need of reading glasses. What next? A magnifying glass? Microscope? Not to mention the new cramps and numbness I’m getting in my hands just from texting more now that I finally have a mobile phone with an augmented keyboard. Scary.

2. Mo-Blogging. Putting aside my stress over trying to see on a tiny screen, typing on a eensy weensy keyboard, and pain and numbness in my hands, some of the blogging tools I use do have a mobile component to them. I could actually “phone in” the posts via SMS, but I haven’t tried that yet. The barrier for me is composing 250-500 words on miniature equipment.

3. M-Marketing. Because of my own tech limitations, I haven’t even begun experimenting with mobile social networks like Peperonity, Zannel, Qik, or ItsMy. I’m beginning to feel the weight of guilt for not being far enough ahead to give my clients the benefit of that experience. How much are we missing without that mobile exposure? I’d argue that unless my clients are trying to reach the audiences who have the right devices and are using these networks (they aren’t), we still have time. Still, I feel I need to be testing these sites out now yet don’t have the tech capabilities to do so.

4. M-Coordination. I’m barely using SMS for anything else other than texting friends and family. If I need to contact someone related to my work, it is email first, project management web sites next, and by phone – as in voice – as last resort. I’m sure I could make a shift, but I think I’d have to start with email communications, and that in itself is still going to be a big leap.

5. M-Communications. Even if I could get my email on one of my mobile devices, I’m still not sure I could process it properly through my squinting eyes, even wearing my reading glasses. I’m not even willing to get any of my Twitter messages on my cell phone because I fear the flood gates will open, and I will no longer be able to control the information overload. But if I’m going to start somewhere with my mobile workability, this is definitely the place to start. If I can get the right equipment and then wrap my head around email on a mobile device (much less be able to read it), then I think the rest of this mobile landscape will come into focus for me – both literally and figuratively.

What I’m really wondering is: Is the pressure I’m feeling to go more mobile because it really is the new way of working or because I’m simply in an industry where I need to stay as close to one step ahead as humanly possible to be viable and to be taken seriously?

What is your mobile device landscape and how are you the ways you are really working with your handhelds?

Affinity Circles provides white-label social network sites for over 140 universities and various professional and fraternal organizations. It’s an effective way to layer an online social network onto one of the most ubiquitous traditional offline social networks – alumni associations. The company’s social networking engine makes it easy to not just find out the usual alumni events and such, but to connect with other alumni online who share an interest, job function or city. Want to know what it’s really like working for a certain company, or doing a particular kind of job function? Hit up your online alumni network.

Today, Affinity Circles took the wraps off their new job service/recruiting service where Fortune 500 employers can reach out to alums of specific universities and offer not just jobs but career paths – and those same alums get red-carpet consideration not afforded the monster.com horde.

From an alum’s point of view, it’s the online version of the old boy (and girl) network for getting a foot in the door to places that don’t need to advertise. Talk to other alumni at that company to get the scoop on what it’s like there. For the 20 or so companies now participating, it’s a way to reach desirable hires in the labor market who may not be actively looking for a job.

Companies can cast their offer as broadly as recruiting to all Affinity Circles’ networks, or as narrow as say graduates of Santa Clara University, Class of 2001 who are interested in a particular corporate career path composed of specific job openings. While the employers get aggregate data about the number of potential applicants, they only get personal data when you choose to raise your hand online.

“There’s about 15 million people who could be using this tool, and only about 650,000 currently levering this tool,” said Chuck Taylor, Affinity Circles’ VP for Marketing. “So there’s a lot of people, especially in this economy, that have a competitive tool, and don’t even realize it.”

So, if you happen to be eligible to join the online social network of one of this companies client schools, you may have a pragmatic reason to join now than just wanting a discount on logo-ed hoodies at the online student store.