Archives for December 2010

There are people in the Social Media space whom we call “great bloggers.” How do you define those people? What traits do they have?

Is it telling a story, as Brian Clark discussed this past week?

Maybe you judge a blogger in a more monetary fashion. Maybe you’d look for someone who would follow the advice from ProBlogger on how to make money blogging.

Maybe you judge a blogger based on his or her passion, as Stanford writes in his post Why You Shouldn’t Just Blog For Yourself.

How do YOU define a great blogger? Is it one of these traits? A mixture? Or is it something else? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Image by Benjamin Earwicker. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bjearwicke

Over the last several months, I’ve shown you a lot of lists. People I admire, posts I found useful.

Now it’s your turn!

From now until Friday, December 10 at 6 PM EST, I’d like you drop me an email. with your nomination for Social Media MVP of 2010.You can include more than 1 person, but I’ll end up choosing 100, and I’ll post those names a week from today.

In the subject line, please include 2010 Social Media MVP

Please let me know the person’s Twitter handle, a link to their blog, and why they are special.

Sound good?

Yesterday, Shama Kabani wrote a post detailing why she unfollowed everyone on Twitter. She makes some good points. Twitter is a huge metropolis instead of a small cozy town. There are a lot of spam bots. There are more mean-hearted people – statistically, that happens when numbers of people increase in general. Shama mentions that she missed being able to see updates from the people she was seeing replies from. So she cut everyone.

The Chopped Liver Syndrome

Here’s the problem for me with this slash and burn strategy. If you cut everyone, then start adding people back slowly but surely (she was up to 44 people she was following when I looked after I read her post), how many people that thought they had a legitimate connection with you are being left wondering why they haven’t been added back yet? How many are left wondering if they’ll ever be added back? What if you’ve talked to that person, but don’t add them back after a post like that? Will they think you were disingenuous when you responded to them? What if you leave off a person you had formed an online friendship with? How many people will find that they are actually feeling quite hurt?

How many will feel like they are chopped liver?

Twitter is what you put into it

A lot of people who come into a chat like Blogchat for the first time say, “Man, this goes so fast. I can’t catch everything!” I always say, “You can’t catch everything. It’s impossible. Catch what you can. Interact as much as you can. Help people who have question marks at the end of their tweets if you can.

For all of the people who say that they are following too many people, I would say the same thing. Will you be able to catch everything everyone says? No. Will you even be able to respond to every @ that you receive? Probably not. But I think we are missing a very simple element in the world of Social Media – being active. Doing things that are not automated for us.

If you genuinely want to stay in touch with someone and see what they are saying, use your time on Twitter to go to their profile, pick something to respond to, and then respond. Let them know you stopped by, even though they didn’t mention you. Go out to the people you want to interact with. Don’t wait for Twitter to deliver you their updates. It won’t happen.

Another option – make lists. I’m following over 1,000 people right now. Out of all of those people, there are quite a few whom I consider friends. People I genuinely care about. No matter how many people I follow, there will always be this ever-growing core of people who I will stay in touch with no matter what. How will I do that? I’ll make lists, as I’ve already started to do, so I can skim in on some of my favorite people. I’ll click to peoples’ profiles when I can. Or if I can’t even find the time to do that, I’ll just say, “Hey, where is so and so? Haven’t talked to you in awhile!” It’s all part of being human. It can be done.

Oh, I have too many friends. You all have to go.

For me, the relationships I’m forging in Social Media are real. I am not rounding up masses of people so that I can sell my beautiful set of cutlery. I’m here to meet people, to network with people. I take that seriously. The people I follow – I follow them all for a reason. And guess what? I’m still following over 1,000 people.

When you are in college, which is another environment where networking and friendships are really important, do you say, “Oh, wait, I’m never going to be able to stay in touch with all of you. You’re all going to have to go”? When you go to a family reunion and all of your cousins, second cousins, aunts half-removed and twice boiled over, and the rest of the clan are there, do you say, “Oh, this is just…this is too many people to keep track of. I’m going to leave the family?”

I hope not.

To me, unfollowing everyone on Twitter is the same line of thinking. I don’t get it. I know that Shama is a brilliant woman, so I’m not trying to fight or lambaste. It just for me is the polar opposite of what I am about here, so I am curious to see where you fit.

Who would you unfollow? How do you keep track of those you do follow? Share your thoughts.

Image by Lars Sundstrom. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/sundstrom

I have been listening lately to One, interspersed with my holiday music. One was the CD George Martin produced a few years ago that mashed up different Beatles songs, enhanced others – really a pretty amazing work of art.

As I was listening to it in my car today, George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps came on. It made me think about his experience with the Beatles and the solo career that came afterwards.

For most of the reign of the Beatles, everything was Lennon/McCartney. George was thrown in with Ringo as “one of the other guys.” And, to be truthful, when he first started, he wasn’t on top of his craft. He was given a lot of covers to sing. You couldn’t really blame him. He had John AND Paul to compete with for space and attention. His songs were always kind of different from the regular Beatles fare, though, especially as he started getting into Indian music and culture.

Eventually, George Harrison forged his own sound, his own reputation, and I would argue that in some ways he outshines Paul in the recreation of his own persona beyond Beatle George.

The Social Media space is filled with a lot of figures that seem like John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  They’ve partnered up with each other and their talent, as a group and individually, is formidable. Are you going to let that stop you in your tracks? Or are you going to forge your own unique style and become your own person, your own brand, your own reputation?

Are you like George Harrison?

Do you remember the movie The Usual Suspects? It came out back in the mid-90s. It was the first “surprise ending” movie that I really really liked. I wasn’t quite ready for The Crying Game back then.

If you still haven’t seen it, let me summarize the non-spoilery parts for you. A handful of men, “the usual suspects,” are arrested for a crime that none of them committed. They decide they’re all going to get revenge, but in the process of forging this alliance, they come to realize that really, they were all gathered together by a massively powerful man who goes by the name Keyser Söze. They have all wronged him in some way, and their payment to him is essentially to carry out a suicide mission that will knock out his enemies. What four of the men don’t realize is that the Keyser is actually one of them.

The interesting thing about Keyser Söze is that he is able to create a network of very different people to carry out the actions of his empire. He is constantly using other peoples’ personality traits (flaws and good points) to his advantage, and people seldom realize that they are serving this purpose for him.

The five main characters of the story (I won’t tell you which one is the Keyser) can be compared to five different kinds of bloggers. I’m going to share with you how you could blog like Keyser Söze and incorporate these other kinds of bloggers into your team.

Verbal: Verbal is a meek guy, somewhat handicapped by cerebral palsy. His skill is that he aligns himself with whomever he perceives to be in control of the situation, because he doesn’t think he is capable of controlling things himself. As a  blogger, the Verbals of Social Media will align themselves loyally with you if you make them feel like they can contribute something without shouldering the weight. If you show that you are a good resource and can offer guidance, you will be able to win the loyalty of these kinds of bloggers, and they will go out and help you promote your work.

Dean Keaton: Dean, in the movie, is dating a class-A lawyer and is trying to get a major international business going, but he used to be a very high-stakes player in the criminal world. He insists throughout the movie that he is done with the game, but of course he can’t really stay away, especially when he is offered wealth beyond his imagination, along with a little control. Getting the Mr. Keatons on your team as a blogger can be done by offering them guest posts or promoting their posts. They may say, on occasion, that Social Media is a dirty stinking world, but they keep coming back for a little more glory, and they like to be told that they are invaluable. If you feed the ego of these folks a bit, they will work for you.

McManus: McManus is the person in the movie who you can really believe is a criminal. He’s easily angered and finds it very easy to pull out his gun and kill people. He’s wild and doesn’t like to plan much, and he likes to stir the boiling pot. In the blogosphere, the McManus folks are the ones who like to post blogs that attack other people or who raise extremely controversial questions with their blogs. They can be hard to get under your wing, but if you let them know that you’re on their team, they’ll be loyal to you. Sometimes the best way to do this is just to mention their blog posts in your own when you are citing 2 opposing views. Give their position a nod. Show them that you read and understood what they were trying to say.

Fenster: Fenster is played by the barely recognizable Benicio del Toro, and he is McManus’s long-time partner. He is the comedy relief in what is otherwise a pretty dark film. He is loyal to McManus and not really to anyone else. He doesn’t really take anything too seriously but he likes money a lot. The Fensters of the blogosphere may not blog a lot about really serious subjects, but they may also get a huge following because they seem accessible. If you can build a partnership with these bloggers, you can benefit from their pull in the Social Media world.

Hockney: The final member of the Usual Suspects clan is Hockney. Hockney’s crime of choice is to hijack trucks that are carrying valuable materials. There are a lot of Social Media Hockneys out there. They want to hijack your blog by making snarly comments, maybe. Perhaps they want to hijack something else that they perceive is a valuable advantage for you. To get a Hockney on your team, you need to make them think that you are giving them your “secret sauce.” Give them a small secret and let them think it’s the key to the castle. Maybe you do a post about how you approach your own blog. Maybe you comment on their blog posts too, building them up when you think they have something good to say. Make them think that they have already hijacked you so that they aren’t looking for anything else. Always keep your eyes on them, but let them talk about your blog posts for you. Let them mention the comments you make on their posts. It’s all part of your evil plan.

Of course, finding ways to incorporate different kinds of people into your own community is not evil, whereas the Keyser, well, he’s a real mean piece of work.

What other kinds of personalities do you see out there? How can you help them and also inspire them to help you? I’d love to hear your thoughts!