From Blog Archive

It isn’t difficult to ‘get’ social media

That is, it isn’t difficult so long as you avoid empty caloried, time sucking applications involving cupcakes, first person dog profiles and ‘Which 80s sitcom characters are you’ quizzes on Facebook.  Linkedin’s also great.  Be aware, however that, though a great business resource, is more of a supplementary research tool as its unspontaneous and self-sterilizing nature kind of prevents it from being much else.

Twitter is a culture

Of all social media, twitter offers the ultimate flexibility in terms of branding and rapid niche connecting.  Though a ton of stuff is being written about it, IMHO, if you just follow “Trust Agents” author Chris Brogan’s tweets, read his blog posts and check out his streamed webinars, you should be fine.  Chris is like that super nice summer camp councilor all the girls had crushes on because, well, because he was so nice.  Brogan is humanizing, fair, community oriented and seems to perpetually exudes this ability to make more friends in a day than many make in a year.  Given that trust and transparency are his credo, his personality is hard to resist.

Listen to the linguists

As cerebral as Chris Brogan is warm, fuzzy, entertaining and anecdotal, when it comes to Web content, linguist Ginny Redish is clear, focused and streamline.  Her definitive book on the topic, “Letting Go of the Words” is mercifully readable and thankfully user oriented.  Be prepared to apply design principles to your words and expect to emerge with an updated arsenal of margin notes, color coding, Sans Serif, chunking and  contextual clarity.  Redish’s book so thorough that it is really the only actual investment you’ll need to make to learn about writing for the web.

Arianna Huffington is blogging, okay?

Though social media stars are generally famous for something achieved outside of their viral social media realm, with bloggers that is not necessarily the case.  Think of Perez Hilton.  Arianna Huffington is the living embodiment of the new media blogging superstar and her status is will deserved.  The Huffington Post provides everything from Pelosi to Politiku (the latter of the two, being a passion project of yours truly:-)  “The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging” is about as comprehensive as it gets.  As with, “Letting Go of the Words” once you’ve got it, you can go ahead and return your big yellow For Dummies volumes to the bookshelf…right back where you found them.

Knowing how to ask

Whether it’s where to go to learn more about SEO optimization, or how to treat a cat’s eye infection, be keyword sensitive, bearing in mind that a computer is categorizing your question. Aardvark.com (with a url that uses the shortened, Vark.com) will try and match the question to someone who can answer. Set up an account and it hooks you in through your Facebook network. Vark is undoubtedly one of social media’s best kept secrets. Not only is it a great when all else fails option. It’s also actually a good place to start your research.

When in doubt, Vark

As with Social Media, blogging has no epicenter.  Also, like the others it offers multiple entry points with multiple hubs around which multiple identities can cluster and congregate. What is different with Aardvark is that it is information, as opposed to personality, driven.  Questions are matched with compatible information providers who, like everyone registered on Aardvark, is encouraged to both ask as well as respond to questions.  If the answers the current online members aren’t doing it for you, you have simply to resubmit and Aardvark will send on to the next round.  Still not working, then resubmit.  Still not?  Then use Vark to ask someone on Vark to help you understand what’s going on.

If you’re into this kinda stuff, you should also be sure to check out the post about how Daylight Saving Time and how Google trends can lead you grammatically astray.