Category Archives: Social Media

Will Social Media Change In 2010?

January 7, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 23 Comments

I came across an article that was actually a guest post on a blog called . The article was titled 10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010. I thought that since the post already have 50 comments and the writer hasn’t responded to any of them that I would comment on what she wrote here and let them have the trackback, if they’re predisposed to accept them. By the way, going unprofessional for a quick moment, I think she’s hot. 😉 Anyway, you can read the same article on her site, and it’s pretty good; pick your poison.

Anyway, here are her top 10 predictions:

Social Media Will Become a Single, Cohesive Experience Embedded In Our Activities and Technologies – This is a very good prediction, and I think it’s right on. I think we saw a lot of this already in 2009, and I think it’s even going to be bigger. Facebook is actually trying to go that way by finding a lot of different platforms and integrate with, so obviously they see that as the future themselves.

Social Media Innovation Will No Longer Be Limited By Technology – I’m not so sure that this one will be able to take place in 2010, but I think it could be very close to happening. Everyone doesn’t have to wait for new technology to do things these days, and I think that’s been evidenced by how many sites seem to crop up trying to copy something that’s already out there.

Mobile Will Take Center Stage – I think this is a bold prediction, but one that will probably take at least another 3 years or so to really get there. Right now, we still have issues with access, dropped calls, and overall costs. Are you one of those folks already paying $150 a month for your iPhone?

Expect an Intense Battle As People and Companies Look To Own Their Own Content – I think this battle has been going on for years, but it all ready started to change up in 2009 with news organizations such as Rupert Murdoch’s companies (which I’ll call “faux news”) griping at Google for linking to their content. I think that’s a stupid move because Murdoch seems to believe that people will just go to his site without first finding the link on Google; ain’t gonna happen. Of course, another minor controversy on this front concerns who actually owns comments on blogs. Stay tuned.

Enterprises Will Shape the Next Generation of What We’ve Called “Social Media” – I had to think about this a little bit before figuring out what side of the fence I was on. The truth is that many large companies are now hiring people with the title of “director of search” or “vice president of search”, which would’ve been unheard of even going back to 2008. Also, more large companies are hiring internal people to not only write their blogs, but to write posts for them on Twitter and also to check streams for any time their company names are mentioned. So, I think she’s on point with this one.

ROI Will Be Measured — and It Will Matter – I don’t know that this is anything new across the board, as companies, especially in 2009, have been taking crucial looks at the bottom line. ROI has always been a buzzword in business, so I’m not sure exactly what supposed to change.

Finally: Real, Cool and Very Bizarre Online-Offline Integration – She paints a very interesting picture with this one, but somewhere in my mind I’m still not sure we have the technology to do this efficiently yet, or cost effectively yet. That plus I tend to think that we just don’t have enough people even now who are computer savvy enough to even manage the Internet, let alone some of these other things.

Many “Old” Skills Will Be Needed Again – Man, am I hoping she’s right on this one. How many people are there who can still add up a string of numbers in their head without needing a calculator to do it? For that matter, what if we let people write it down on paper and figured out? And isn’t it a shame that when you go to a fast food restaurant everything is now in pictures rather than numbers on a cash register?

Women Will Rule Social Media – The funny thing about this one is that when blogging first started, it was mainly women who were doing it. Men passed women when they figured out they could make money from blogging. Now social media takes into account so many things that it’s hard to determine who is really running what. So, it’s possible women are already ruling social media; I’m not sure where to find any real answers on this one, but I don’t have any real opinion either way.

Social Media Will Move Into New Domains – This is another bold prediction that possibly may have already occurred, at least in some fashion. I have to admit that I’m amazed at some of the people and some of the businesses that have finally figured out what social media is and what it can do for them, but there’s so many more people and companies to go. Personally, I think my main business would profit greatly if more of them were into social media, especially since I rank so well for those main search terms. Once again, I really hope she’s right on this one.

There is my commentary; what are your thoughts?

Social Media

How Are You Using Social Media For Promotion?

November 13, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 7 Comments

In my previous post, I asked Are You Using Social Media For Promotion? This time around, I’m asking how people use it, and I’m going to tell how I’ve been using some of it.

First, let’s start with Twitter. Since I signed up with Twitter, the number of visitors has gone up. I know it’s because every post I write on all my blogs shows up on Twitter.

But that’s not nearly enough. What I do with Twitter is participate in the full process. That means I talk to other people. I retweet what other people post or say that I feel is pretty good. I post news articles I like that I want to share with people, even if it’s political. I post people’s blog posts that I like to Twitter, though most people don’t know it. Every once in awhile, I promote something I do, like writing or executive coaching. Also, every once in awhile I post that I’m holding “office hours,” although to date no one has taken me up on a visit during that time.

I figure when there’s really nothing to say, it’s time to share something that’s caught my interest at the time; it’s amazing who will respond to certain things at certain times. I even got to participate in what’s known as a TweetUp, which means I met people in person, twice I might add, through Twitter. And I ask people to follow me on Twitter, which of course helps me reach even more people, though I’m not making a large grab at followers. All organic; that works best for me. Now, if you’d like to follow me, you can click on the link above, or click on the bird to the right.

Through Twitter, I’ve gotten many interviews, one of which ended up in the newspaper, and some I’ve shared here and on my business blog. I’ve met some very interesting people, including Guy Kawasaki, who, because of our association, listed my business blog on his Alltop site under “leadership”; that was pretty cool. And I’ve learned some things as well; there really are a lot of smart people on Twitter, once you work your way through the noise.

Next, LinkedIn. Years ago, I couldn’t quite figure out how to use it. Back then, they didn’t have groups like they do now. Eventually they did start something, but it’s really only taken off in the last year. I’ve fully gotten myself into the LinkedIn experience also. My profile is totally complete, including an image. I belong to 10 groups at this juncture. I have 159 direct connections, which supposedly means I’m within range of tens of thousands of other people through a direct connection with some of these folks; freaky. I’ve had 21 people recommend me for something, which is pretty neat, as I’ve also recommended some people. The groups thing has really been interesting because it allows me to engage in business conversations with people around the world. I’ve even had the opportunity to meet two or three people in person through LinkedIn; wild! If you click on that link above, you should be taken to my LinkedIn profile page.

Next, Ryze. At one time Ryze was the premiere place to be, but it lost its way when the powers that be stopped updating things and listening to its members. I had a lot of business connections there through the years, some of whom I’m still in contact with, but they just fell off the wagon. Every once in awhile I still avail myself of their advertising area, just to get a backlink to something, but it’s rare. Of course, the best thing about Ryze is that it lets you set up your own homepage in any manner you’d like to, and that’s really the coolest thing of any of the social media sites I belong to. If you click on the link above, it might let you go to my page without joining, but I can’t guarantee that.

Facebook is an interesting animal. I’ve tried to mainly do business things there, but man, it’s just hard to do. I don’t participate in a lot of the goofy stuff, but I do play two versions of Scrabble there. And I talk to people, mainly individually through the feeds that pop up in your news feed area. I’ve met some great people there, and I’ve been reintroduced to old friends, and I mean people from college and high school; that’s always pretty neat as well. I set up two groups, neither one of them actually business groups, but neither does all that well. I’ve given thought to creating a fan page, but I hate joining them myself, so I feel like that would be hypocritical of me to do it. But I know I’m missing out on a great marketing tool, so I have to think about it some more. Once again, I think if you click on the link it’ll take you to my Facebook profile page.

Quick hitters on the rest, since this is getting fairly long. Obviously I blog, and I talked briefly about that in the last one. I use instant messaging, though not as often as I used to. I’m signed up with 8 forums, but I visit one way more than the others. But on each forum, I have a signature line of some sort, driving people to either a couple of blogs or a couple of websites. It’s about backlinks and SEO, but forums are also about participating and talking to people. All of it is a process for publicity, which I talked about recently also.

I think that’s enough. You’ve seen what I do; now, how are you using social media for promotion?

Social Media

Are You Using Social Media For Promotion?

November 12, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 15 Comments

This is the first of a two part series on social media. The first article is asking if you’re using social media to promote yourself, whatever that “self” is supposed to be. The second article will be asking how are you doing it, and it’ll be more than just asking which sites you’re going to. Of course I’ll be telling some of my stuff also, but with the opening, I now give myself a place to do an internal link once I’ve written both posts. Method to the madness; and so we begin.

By now, everyone should know what I mean by social media, but I’m not going to take any chances. Social media is where people have the opportunity to interact with each other within a controlled environment of some type. Actually, back in the day, we used bulletin board systems to talk to each other, and in many ways that was the earliest bit of social media out there. Then we had early chat rooms, and Usenet, which was a lot of fun initially.

The problems were interesting back then. You could only spend 30 minutes to an hour on bulletin board systems before you got kicked off. Chat rooms weren’t close to being private, and one night I tried talking to over 30 people at the same time for almost 2 hours; never did that again. Usenet was interesting, but sometimes it took too long, got strangely heated, you’d see posts in multiple groups, and eventually it got taken over by pornographers and spammers.

Today’s social media seems to be more social, strange at that sounds. Instant messaging is more personal. Websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Ryze can be more personal, with options of being more participatory. Second Life actually allows you to be something else entirely different. And Twitter is instantaneous gratification if you want it, and that actually works best if you care to build up relationships. To a degree, blogging in today’s world is also a form of social media, because fewer people are using blogs as diaries, instead either talking about issues, points of views, or selling something such as products or their business knowledge. And of course there are forums I also belong to.

I participate in all of the above except Second Life. There were other sites I had joined, but none of them really did anything for me. Even Ryze isn’t doing much for me these days, as I’ve cut back from my high ever of 11 groups to only one. However, the other sites are doing some interesting things for me, as long as I’m participating in some of the processes that I’m being afforded.

Now, can I say I’ve made any money from any of them just yet? Not definitely, that’s for sure. Well, I’ve made a little bit from blogging, so I do have to throw that in there. I got a speaking engagement once because of my business blog. Two of my blogs have generated a little bit of Adsense money, and this blog actually got a sale of a CJ product once. And I negotiated a writing assignment with a couple of people through IM (instant messaging for the uninitiated), which means I made money there also. And Digital Point forum has garnered me a few clients that I still have as far as writing goes.

As for promotion, Twitter has gotten me quite a few interviews. Both my business blog and this one got me other interviews. Though this blog lost its PR (page rank), it’s still looking pretty good on Alexa, though I still want to crack that 100,000 number one of these days. I mentioned all those followers on Twitter, and I’ve talked to many of those people, including Guy Kawasaki, whose book I helped edit, then got a signed copy of.

And I continue to try to figure out more ways I can use these different social media opportunities. So, I ask once more; are you using social media for promotion?

Blogging, Social Media, Writing, Motivation and General Stuff