Margie Clayman

When I first started on Twitter, as I have recounted many a time before, I thought that I was missing out on a really huge joke. I had been hearing about how great Twitter was for about 2 years, and I decided that I should at least be able to talk intelligently about why so many people thought it was great. I figured I might as well jump in and try it out. I expected that I’d send a few tweets out, people would start talking to me, and then I’d be all set.

Boy was I wrong.

First of all, as so many people new to Twitter do, I followed most of the accounts that Twitter suggested. Say hello to Rainn Wilson, Harvard Business Review, Yoko Ono, Fast Company, Mashable, and Michael Ian Black. I was sort of scratching my head. Do these folks reply to someone who is just getting used to Twitter? As I stuck around a bit, the answer became clear. No. No they don’t.

In the meantime, I had started to follow enough people that I noticed that there were conversations going on. In fact, some people had really fun conversations. Some people could say anything and it would get retweeted. Boy was I jealous of them. I couldn’t get a single person to reply to me. I tried everything. Since I was having the same problem on my blog, I was getting quite the complex. Was I doing something wrong? Was I just too new? How long did you have to stick around before you had cut your teeth enough?

In short, I was getting rather discouraged with the whole mess.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About Getting That First Reply On Twitter

On the first post in this series, we talked about how to get started on the road to curating content. Today I want to talk with you a little bit about why it’s beneficial to travel on that curation road.

Now, a lot of the answers are probably going to seem rather humdrum to you if you’ve read about this subject before. For example, a lot of people talk about “link love” or “link juice” when they talk about curating online content. That’s because if you format your post just so, you are giving a lot of context-rich links to the person whose post you’re curating. Google loves contextual links, so you are doing that person a really nice favor. In return, many people will mention your curation of their post via Twitter or maybe even via their own blog, so you get some traffic love in return.

Another benefit we’ve talked about right here at this very site is that curating content can help you build community. You get to meet other bloggers, and as I’ve found, you also get to meet a lot of other curators. You get to read and share a lot of different perspectives, and you can build yourself a reputation, and a community, based on being a resource for valuable, well-written information.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About the Advantages of Content Curation

One of the great things about my particular community, I’ve discovered, is that people aren’t afraid to ask me questions. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been writing a lot about curating content online both here and at 12most.com. Martina McGowan tweeted me and said, “This all sounds great. How do I get started though?”

That’s a pretty good question, and in fact, Martina’s question sparked the idea not just for this post but also for the entire “Let’s Talk About” series. So thanks, Martina!

How I got started curating content

I’ve said it before, and I’ll very probably say it again, but I feel curating content is very much like generating content in that everyone needs to find their own way to do it. If you look at one of Ingrid Abboud’s post round-ups they are very different from those that Jason Sokol does. Both of them curate differently than I do. No way is right or wrong, and I’m sure we all got started in different ways, too. So, I’m just going to tell you what I know, which is how I got started curating content.

The fact is, I started gathering posts because I felt like I was really slacking when it came to reading peoples’ blogs. When I first started doing this “social media stuff,” I started blogging and tweeting at the same time. I figured if I was going to tweet, I should have a way to prove I can talk in more than 140-character phrases, and I figured if I was going to blog, I should have a way to promote what I was doing. What I quickly discovered, however, was that just promoting my own content was not all that exciting for me or for my followers. I needed to pass along information that was interesting to other people.

At first, I tried to go the newsy route. I would go to sites like BtoBonline.com or Mashable. The thing is, everybody goes to those sites. There are Twitter accounts that already flash their headlines out. I wasn’t really performing a great service for anybody, and I wasn’t supporting the bloggers I was getting to know, either. So, I started reading blogs, but then I found that I just kept going to the same sites over and over. That wasn’t good either.

At my wit’s end, I decided to start something I called “30 Thursday.” My goal was to read enough posts so that I could promote my 30 favorites every Thursday. If you think that’s a lot of reading, you’re absolutely right, but here’s the little trick I tried that helped out a lot. When I first started curating content, I didn’t just choose posts I liked. I also asked people to let me know what they were reading that they liked. A lot of people took advantage of this opportunity, and when I did my round-ups I would credit those people by saying, “Xyz brought this post to my attention…” This helps you build your community on a lot of different levels, it exposes you to content you might not otherwise have seen, and you get to network with the new bloggers, too. It worked out pretty well for me in terms of teaching me the ropes of the online world.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About How to Start Curating Content

This fantastic post is by Brandon P. Duncan!

Brandon Duncan is the author of Brandon the Duncan – Fatherhood in 4L, a dad blog. In addition to writing there, he also participates in several online writing clubs, contributes to multiple other sites, and is currently working on a children’s book. Connect with him at brandontheduncan.com.

Not long ago, we were all teens. We all had a parental figure; and most of us thought they were kind of dumb—until we grew up a little. Now we see that they were actually pretty smart and knew what they were talking about. Guess what? That’s you now. You are a parent, a role model, or the cool uncle or aunt to someone. How, you ask?

There are many new bloggers out there right now, and most of them are like teenagers. They’re bulletproof. They’re all going to be successful and blow out the glass ceiling. They’re going to be rich with no effort. I mean, “how hard can it really be?!”

You’re shaking your head right now, aren’t you?

I know you are, because I’m that teen, and I see what you pro-bloggers and experts are trying to do for me… I just don’t know how to process it all—yet. You know what you are talking about; you just forgot what it was like to be new—to be a teen.

I’m going to compare a few statements that we all either heard from our parents, used ourselves as teens, or have heard from our teens to some lessons in social media and blogging. Maybe these will help you refocus some of your helpful efforts.

[Read more…] about New Bloggers Are Like Teenagers

OK, OK. Everyone, it seems, is talking about the people who are unfollowing hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter and then following back 2-300 people. Chris Brogan did it first. Then Michael Hyatt, and now I guess other people are falling like a chain of dominoes.

I am not happy that people who have been role models in the online world are doing this all at once, all at the same time, and I have two reasons for that. First, whether it’s intended or not, I think it bespeaks a desire to close ranks, create cliques, or otherwise create a list of “who’s cool” and who ain’t. In addition, I worry about people who are just getting started. If these well-respected folks aren’t following anyone new back, it’s going to be thousands of times harder for those people to break through the granite ceiling that is success in this space.

At the same time, I look in wonder at the folks who are just so beyond flustered at this, to the point where they are badmouthing these people in the broad Twitter stream. Is it worth it? Do you want to look like a jerk just because Darren Rowse unfollowed you? I don’t really get that.

Above all else though, this whole chain of events – the initiation of the unfollowings, the reactions, the back-and-forth, the squabbling on Twitter and in blogs – it bespeaks a lack of health in the online world. It makes us all look really, really juvenile. Do your customers want to see you cursing the big names? If you’re here on behalf of a nonprofit, is it going to help a lot of people to lament that some people are unfollowing other people on Twitter?

I know there are some deep-seated feelings on all sides of this issue. I totally get it. I understand both sides, all sides, 100%. But seriously, people, after the last week, isn’t it clear that this is not worth our time? Isn’t it clear that there’s much more to life than who is following who on a website? Have we not graduated beyond this level of micro-analysis, pettiness, shallowness, and other nesses?

This is the last I’m going to say about this issue. I’ve voiced my opinions, I’ve tried to intercede where people were becoming unreasonable. If you want to juggle your professionalism with complaining about stuff like this, I guess that’s cool. By the same token, if you want to spend your time following and unfollowing and then refollowing people, that’s cool too. I’m on to other stuff though, okay? I hope you’ll join me.

Image by Ruth Livingstone. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Rbut