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Thoughts and things I care to shareThinking about FADs
Do you ever get tired of the phrase "social media"?
I don’t get tired of the concepts, methodology, and excitement that encompasses what so many of us are doing or trying to do. However, I do get tired of hearing "social media" about everything. It’s like labeling everything "green" or "eco-friendly". I’m not against those concepts either, but I sure am tired of hearing the phrases.
How do we engage people and business without repeating the hype? What good are buzzwords anyway, other than to evangelize something? Where is the substance for business to bite into, for them to more easily recognize the opportunities within the hot new trends of social media?
There are several people who manage to convey the concepts and ideas of social media without needing to promote the hype. Their deeds in writing and working on the topic is an inspiration to follow. Similar to all the people who quietly recycle, cut back fuel consumption, or practice renewable techniques in more and more areas. They too don’t feel the need to worship at the alter of "green", yet their actions make the bulk of the difference.
I guess what I’m working towards is the real, usable, tools and techniques that make up "social media". I’m looking to work with those companies that are confused, and help them figure out what their business needs. Past all the buzzwords, past the fads, past the hype and into the needs of an organization and finding the right tool for them to use for the right purpose.
My question is: What have I missed that you believe is important to that end?
Photo credit: Boskizzi
June Catch Up
As it happens to me a few times a year, work & life take precedence over blogging. It’s a frustrating experience as it usually happens when I am in the middle of pulling a lot of ideas together.
At any rate, I have realized something this time around. I spend more time blogging when I don’t have much exciting things going on. Or looked at another way, I blog a lot less when I’m spending more quality time with family, friends, and making social media things happen in the real world.
Right now, I’ve been so involved with the transition from one client to another that I haven’t made a priority to talk about things here. There’s enough happening out in the real world, that I’m struggling to get back and talk about things here. To me, that’s doubly bad because I have a lot to talk about with you, and had just redesigned the blog to accommodate a lot more of these topics.
I’ve found there are a couple page to finish up here as well, to finish the refocus of things I learned at SOBCon08. Speaking of SOBCon, there were so many new learning’s for so many people coming out of that one event that it amazes me still, two months later. Start planning to attend next year folks, that’s all I can say.
Well, I’ve got a number of posts and post ideas in the works, and will be working on those and many other things. Hopefully I’ll have a few interesting pieces to share soon. Thanks your for patience – we’ll see you around the ‘net.
Photo credit: kevinzim
Connecting People
If you’ve been blogging or interacting on social media sites for some time, you’ll know the real reason many people are interesting in social networking. It’s the people of course! The power of social media is in it’s ability to shrink borders, provide publishing & broadcasting platforms, and do so in ways that make it very easy for people to use them.
That’s what I find most interesting about social media, being able to see people meet, plan new things, and build new things. Sure I like to be part of it too, but my goal is to bring people together so they can find the resources, ideas, inspiration or whatever it is that they need. I like seeing people make that next leap, that next step.
Watching it happen with people all over the world is a great thing, but it’s just as fascinating to see it happening on the local level as well. It’s one of the most important aspects of the social web, and one that I believe that is taking parts of it mainstream. I always hesitate to mention “mainstream”, but I see more and more people experimenting, or starting to use some social features on product sites.
It’s great to see that happen, because as our modern neighborhoods have kind of closed in on themselves, becoming safer, more secure, the physical interaction has waned. So it’s great to see people coming back around and getting more interactive online. In doing so, it seems that they really start getting interested in socializing in person as well. So I think it really generates a lot of community building offline as well as online.
Photo credit: roel1943
Steven Hodson – Now on Mashable
One of my favorite bloggers has been picked up by one of the big names in blogging today. Blogging friend Steven Hodson can be found blogging on Mashable in addition to his own blog, WinExtra.
Steven has a knack for bringing a practical approach to all this newfangled technology and sharing stuff. 
He’ll tell you that he’s “a cranky old fart wandering the Internet causing mayhem as he goes”, but I know better. He’s a knowledgeable blogger who’s not afraid to point out some of the silliness that we think is import in web 2.0, and also shares useful ideas for making it better.
So congratulations Steven! I have long believed that it was only a matter of time before one of the bigger blogs snapped him up to write for them. Check out his first “official post” as a blogger for Mashable.
Thoughtful Replies
Mark Evans has a post today in which he talks about the importance of thinking through our contributions to conversations. It’s something that I’ve learned myself in various businesses & projects that I’ve been involved in.
Taking even a half hour to contemplate and let the questions or ideas rattle around in your head allows you to better understand what was sent to you. It also gives you the time to formulate a more informative and relevant response.
Since we’re so connected and probably overloaded with communications, it’s too easy to simply reply right away. Sure, in doing so we demonstrate our ability to respond, we show that we’re connected and are willing to participate.
However, do we really give every communication we receive the full attention it deserves? How often do you take the time to fully contemplate the full context of what someone is asking? Do these quick replies really add value to the conversation or to the person who sent the message?
I think Mark is onto an interesting line of thought lately. Thinking about blogging, conversations and the quality involved simply in communicating with each other. Sharing information is a great thing, and we can do it so easily these days. The responsibility is upon us to use these opportunities of sharing information in a useful way. That means not sharing incorrect information, or being too verbose in our replies, thereby wasting time in misunderstandings.
What else fits in this area? What more can you add to what Mark is pointing out? There are many great tips that you have to share – leave one here or on your own blog. How do you handle replies? Quick or thoughtful?
Dumbphone
Ok, in a moment of weakness (or brilliance… you decide) I jumped at the change to go back to a simple feature phone rather than a smartphone. So my trusty T-Mobile MDA (my MDA Page is here) has been replaced with the phone you see to the right – a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic. I’d been planning on waiting it out for the US version of the HTC Touch Diamond that would leverage T-Mobile’s 3G network. Or biting the bullet and jumping from T-Mobile to AT&T just for the 3G iPhone this summer.
Instead, I found something that I hadn’t been looking for. Simplicity at a price that I couldn’t pass up. While talking with Amy about phone and such, it dawned on me that the one function of my phone that I use more than anything is… voice calls!?! Yep, turns out all the fancy ‘why? because I can stuff’ just doesn’t count for much when all I really used all my smartphones for over the years is voice calls.
Sure, I’ve used weather apps, email apps, feed aggregators, note taking apps, the new fancy touch-scrolling “today” apps, and many, many, many others. But in the last year, they’ve really not been of use to me. Probably because of having a laptop with me more often than not, and the proliferation of WiFi.
Still there where two items that I couldn’t live without. Tethering of my laptop and the ability to receive email. Tethering and using the phone’s EDGE service works fine, but alas, email simply sux. I’m working on a solution to that, but it’s not a show stopper. A nifty feature is the ability to sync music with Windows Media Player & Rhapsody’s 4+ million tracks. Kicks ass as a media player, something I hadn’t planned on but was drawn to in the end. I happened to capture a speedtest while connected via EDGE and testing that out.
![image[5][1]](https://rickmahn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/image51.png){kind=small}
Then nice thing is that for the first time in about 5 years (probably longer) I’ve got a sexy little phone rather than a big brick hanging off my belt. The fact that it was uber affordable in comparison to a smartphone that’d not use 1/10th of the features helps too.
Being a IT guy, and a technologist at heart, I still long for the big-buck devices… I just don’t have a real use for them at this time. We’ll see if this lasts.
Looking for 4 Firefox plug-in updates
My migration to Firefox 3 has been fairly painless. I specifically put off trying out most all the beta versions until the last release candidate. Since I’d embraced the plug-in feature of Firefox and installed upwards of two dozen of these spiffy enhancements to a great browser I knew a few (or many) would not be updated right away.
And I was right, many plug-ins were not updated when I installed FF3 rc3, and I had to do without a lot of functionality. The only thing that allowed me to ride it out from the release candidate to shipping code was the fact that Foxmarks was updated to work with FF3 – it’s my absolutely most needed plug-in.
But in the three weeks I’ve been running the latest versions of Firefox 3, I’ve seen updates to plug-ins on an almost daily basis! out of 21 plug-ins, I’ve only 4 that aren’t yet updated: Blog This in Windows Live Writer, coComment!, ColorZilla, and Thinger.
UPDATE: I just found the latest ColorZilla beta here that works with Firefox 3! In addition, I removed the coComment! plug-in as I see that the folks at coComment themselves will be getting their plug-in updated shortly. I’ve kind of given up waiting for any update to the Blog This in Windows Live Writer plug-in. That leaves Thinger, which I really do hope gets updated, because I really need a second (third?) bookmark toolbar.
On the Firefox 3 Final Version
Yep, upgraded to the final version yesterday. Pretty happy that I did. Performance is noticeably improved, memory usage improved, and several dozen plugins where upgraded yesterday in sync with the new release.
You can find the download for Firefox 3 here. Good stuff!
Why You Should Build Your Audience
An interesting component of your online brand is most certainly audience. Without it, there is little point in doing much of anything online other than email, research, and storing information. Audience is what makes the web 2.0 world turn, as we’re all dependent upon the interactivity that audience brings.
Without people to follow, read, and comment on what each of us creates, we would have no measuring stick to compare ourselves to. We would not have a way to gauge improvement in knowledge or abilities. We’d be unable to find out what help others need, or how to learn something new from readers. Audience is a crucial piece to the social web.
As individuals, we shouldn’t be hesitant to grow audience in building our brand, or writing a blog. It’s not an egotistical to want to reach more people, its right in line with human nature to connect with people and socialize. Maintaining your audience is the other half of the equation – the one that give direct feedback of whether or not you’re adding value for them. It’s important to understand the expectations you set for your audience so you can continue to meet those expectations.
For organizations it’s easier in a way since they have long had marketing strategies that target certain demographics (specific audiences) for their product or service. They have been growing and maintaining their target markets for decades in some cases. There is one difference with online audience for organizations though: interactivity. This is not something that is found offline – you don’t see comments on magazine ads for your favorite soda or show company. You will online though, and that is the big challenge for the enterprise as they move into the social media space.
Bringing people to your social web is an important part of the social aspect. It allows for feedback, interaction and growth for all involved. Are you actively growing your audience?
What tips & techniques do you use or suggest for others to help grow their audience? How do you approach readers, followers, and friends on your social web?
Look for my article ‘Audience’ in the upcoming August 2008 issue of Personal Branding Magazine in which I talk about why growing and maintaining audience is important to personal brand.
Photo credit: GlowPlug
Old media bias – or is it fear of obsolescence?
Saturday night I was listening to social media guru & fellow Social Media Breakfast conversationalist @Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners being interviewed on WCCO radio here in Minneapolis. What really struck me was the way in which the host of the show totally spun every point that was brought up. Instead of a real discussion of what is happening in the social media space, she choose to simply believe her pre-conceived notions of the Internet as a “dangerous” place.
Now I agree that everyone is welcome to believe what they want, but to not let an honest discussion develop seems deceiving to me. Whether you believe in the hype or not isn’t the point, rather the inability to have an honest discussion about something on an old-media platform in a public space. Personally I think that fellow Twitter @MNHeadHunter hit the nail on the head in this tweet.
@rickmahn Biased or not knowledgable. Or feeling threatened 🙂
Personally, this is one of the examples that worries me about so many people relying on old media for all their political news. If we can’t have an honest discussion of the facts on the platform about something like social media, how can I trust them about my political choices from any party? Disappointing to say the least.
Oh yeah, Albert was great on talking about facts, concepts, and directions – well done Albert!
Did anyone else catch the broadcast last Saturday? What did you think of the interview?
😢
“We are not enemies but friends.”
Live your life.
Completely.
Without fear.
Live it with Love, compassion, empathy, tolerance and joy.
Treat every person with the kindness, respect and dignity they deserve by the very virtue of being a human being.
Out riding this rainy, wet spring. Got 1,000 miles on the clock with more to come this season. #IMRG #IndianMotorcycle
Watching early seasons of #GoldRush. Fun seeing @GoldrushRick in season 3! Hope his new season is off to a good start!
Oh yes I did! https://www.instagram.com/p/BsRDO9ogSO0/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=1kha5yzhjq3ot