Who are we? Two city dames. We don't Twitter or Facebook but we must learn. We stepped out of the workplace for a few years amid the tech explosion. Now that our kids can change their own clothes, as well as their passwords, filters and screen names, we have some catching up to do. In 28 days (incidentally, the traditional lockup or detox time)
we intend to immerse ourselves in social networking.
Warts and all, here is our ongoing saga.....
When we started this blog, we aimed at achieving a semblance of competence with social networking and determining whether it had applications beyond keeping in touch with friends and family. If I am to be totally candid, we also viewed the concept with some skepticism: lonely housewives facebooking about their grocery lists and harmlessly or not so harmlessly flirting with old flames; stargazing wannabes monitoring how many crunches Ashton Kutcher does at the gym today; maybe a few uber techie businesses utilizing it for online sales.
Whether we achieved a level of competence depends on how you define competence, but we are certainly more comfortable and confident than we were on Day One. As far as the applications of social media beyond showcasing vacation photos, well, the sky's really the limit. Without overstating it, we are in the midst of a revolution.
Consider:
--1/8 of couples that married in the US in 2008 met via social networking.
--There are over currently 200,000,000 blogs on the web (with all those choices, thank you for reading ours!). 54% of bloggers post and/or tweet daily.
--YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and has surpassed online porn as the most popular web activity. (That's good news, right?)
--With an estimated 400,000,000 users, if Facebook were a country it would be the 4th largest in the world.
--96% of Generation Y is currently engaged in social networking activity.
--80% of companies now use LinkedIn as their primary source of prospective employees.
--35% of Amazon.com's sales are now for Kindle products.
--1/6 of higher education classes are currently taken online.
Are you represented on LinkedIn? (The online white pages of Business today.) Check.
Are you posting stuff on your Facebook page? Check
Ahhhh, but do you have a custom professional network -- a hub that's exclusive to your own members..? Thought not; few companies do. The global association of 100 Women in Hedge Funds Foundation, however, does, and it's called Connect, http://connect.100whf.org/
Why did they head along this route? Why add yet another networking tool to the ever lengthening laundry list of one's professional and Social Media responsibilities?
"We looked at both Facebook and LinkedIn. But Facebook seemed too social - best used for connecting with family and friends - and LinkedIn seemed flat," remarked Mindy Posoff of the influential professional body for women in hedge funds a.k.a 100 Women in Hedge Funds (actually make that 10,000 women worldwide).
Rapid global expansion drove this association to ponder how best to formalize and nurture the relationships between their members and create a professional networking forum representative of their diverse activities.
In a typical week, these activities might range from:
hosting a financial affairs summit in Toronto,
to distributing a webcast interview with a hedge fund superstar,
or encouraging participation in one of the Foundations many philanthropic activities.
As Posoff explained, they wanted a Facebook-like experience whereby they could keep members informed, involved and share their professional know-how.
Of their 10k membership, 3000 have to date joined this social ampitheater. Joining has been deliberately layered; "we didn't want the website crashing before we'd tested it out, said Posoff. All roads lead to Connect though; look for 100 Women in Hedge Funds on Facebook, LinkedIn and you'll find big red arrows directing you to join their organization and the connect network -- that is, if you meet the professional criteria.
How well patronized is this networking hub?
"We know we have a lot of members who use the site for content and connections. But our membership is pretty cautious about expressing their opinions in online forums as this is a professional association. We know there's lots of activity though...One woman was attending a conference in another city and she wanted to organize an important meeting there. She didn't know the city that well and so she posted a query asking other members for advice. Several women jumped in and offered suggestions, based on their first-hand experience. We also use an analytics tool to find out what our members are most interested in. The content, the event and the jobs section are extremely active. We know as we continue to have ongoing unique visitors to those areas on the site.”
We found a great example of a business using social media skills brilliantly, and it's in a field that is not typically known for networking of this flavor. Green Aisle Grocery, a small, organic gourmet food purveyor in a hipster up and coming neighborhood of South Philly, has developed a business model that rivals the proverbial sliced bread (which, in their case would be made from locally grown grains in small batches by artisan bakers). The part of the model that interests us (besides the amazing inventory that tempts these two foodies sorely) is the innovative approach to moving their merchandise, much of which has a very short shelf life. It seems so obvious now....immediacy is key, so Green Aisle Grocery Tweets. They have over 700 followers, and these followers are engaged, active participants in Green Aisle's operation.
Tweets keep customers apprised of the newest, the freshest, the most precious, the limited supplies and the promotions that are on offer all day every day. Recent tweets announced a special sale on milk, as well as a delivery of Berks County raspberries, first of the season, and what to look forward in the produce section on Friday (zucchini blossoms!). Frequently they get their hands on something really special from a local chef--Zahav's hummos anyone? They tweet it, and plugged-in foodies scramble to Passyunk Ave in the hopes of getting their hands on a gustatory gem.
In addition to the clever use of Twitter, Green Aisle's dynamic website showcases their inventory, keeps customers updated on supplies of specific items, features frequent plats du jour recipes that utlize the recently arrived merchandise--garlic ramps or merguez sausage, say. This creates desire and demand, and helps their followers discover new and delicious ways to consume their offerings.
I had dinner with two seasoned vets on Philly's food scene last night and described this place. They were both aghast and characterized Green Aisle's approach as "sheer genius."
Now I'm off to buy some of this chocolate cherry candied almond cookie dough before they run out. Bon Appetit! Posted by: Keri
Having jumped into the pool, we continue to paddle our way around, occasionally sinking, but ever availing ourselves of the life rafts that surround us in the forms of online resources and local experts who are willing to be interviewed for the price of food and booze.
Recent searches have turned up some useful articles and suggestions:
General consensus is that serious bloggers use Wordpress. While I may aspire to such heights eventually, I will think long and hard about abandoning blogger, where I have achieved a modicum of competence. Research indicates that Wordpress is less user friendly. Our experience supports this. We attempted a brief foray into Wordpress round about Day 13 thinking we might transfer this whole kit and kaboodle but were flummoxed at the starting block, so we pressed on with blogger. There are pros and cons to each platform, detailed here. Thank you hubpages.com.
Loved this list of "Awful Blogging Practices". (Gosh, I hope we've avoided them!) Here's the full article. Thank you 2createawebsite.com.
The Seven Deadly Sins.....
1. Lack of Focus--Think boutique, not Wal-Mart.
2. Impatience--Technorati says most top ranked blogs are at least three years old.
3. Social Bookmarking Overload--Don't crowd your template with these icons--most readers don't know what they are ignore them.
4. Overabundance of Ads--To generate income from a blog you must: 1) build useful content; 2) attract targeted traffic 3) monetize the traffic with ads and affiliate programs. Don't reverse the steps by posting ads first; Content is King and that's what will make your blog a success.
6. Ineffective Post Titles--Each post is a hook--you'll notice that we've nixed the practice of starting our post titles with "Day Twenty-Three"--because that tells you nothing and attracts no one.
7. Overly Formal Tone--Online writing is conversational, so adjust your style accordingly. Unless you are writing for the United Nations blog or some equally esteemed institution, lighten up, include your readers, encourage comments.
Fromdopestodoyennes.com - not exactly a giant leap for Mankind...But definitely some not so small steps for us.
It's difficult to apply the classic marketing rules of engagement to our own situation. We're publishing a not-for-profit, experimental blog; we're not selling anything to anyone. We're curious about Social Media and want to share our experience with others who are interested in taking small steps in the same direction. But what if we were earnestly promoting our blog..? What should we be doing to increase visibility?
The Universe of Metatags, Key Phrases and Search 'Bots' We gamely interrogated another friend (seduced to offer information in exchange for Keri's coconut brownies). This chocolate lover was -- in a previous incarnation -- also a web designer who learned about Internet marketing by promoting his own bricks and mortar business. We asked him to explain the mysteries of Google rankings. (We're still puzzled about why certain older days of our blogs continue to rank higher than more recent postings -- when everyone tells us that the search 'bots' like fresh content best.)
According to our source, metatags (i.e. the information that attracts the attention of search engines) comprise three levels of information:
Title of your blog/site
Keywords
Description
The title of your blog is the most important source of information for the search engines. It needs to be relevant and reflect the content of your blog. Keywords have become incredibly sophisticated, and to get this right requires an ongoing military campaign. Our expert suggests that keywords are insufficient these days. Instead, he favors key phrases; a minimum of 2-3 words in a single phrase.
The (Internet) Space Race
To identify useful phrases for your own blog/website, he recommends typing the key phrase you are thinking of using into Google and then look at, say, the top 10 pages of results to understand the sites associated with this phrase. Then look at the source code for several of the top ranking sites and work out which key search terms they are using. (Sounds like industrial espionage this, but apparently, it's fair play as people jostle for pre-eminence in Google's rankings!) Google analytics is another useful source for identifying trends, however, as our insider confirms, yet again, this is an inexact science, a case of ongoing trial and error: "If anyone could really tell how Google ranks sites, what algorithms its search engines use, they could make millions." Another word of advice, make sure that you repeat your keywords and phrases in the body content of your blog. Apparently one of the things that the search engine looks for is relative relationships, that is, whether the key phrases you have flagged is supported by the actual content of your site.
A short digression while we revisit the issue of the naming of our blog... "It's one of the silliest names I've ever come across," confirms our source. "When you pick a name, keep two rules in mind; can you say it over the radio without having to spell it out? Is it three syllables or less?"
With only six more posts to write, we'd like to end on a cultural note and cite words of encouragement from a Victorian poem Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning.
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"
Exactly.
If we hadn't come up with a silly name and started writing this silly blog we'd never have found out about any of this silly stuff.
The formatting of one of our posts was misbehaving today. We kept repeating the same action until we realized that something must be awry with the HTML coding. Bravely, we ventured into the "edit HTML" box of blogger.com and started the detective work. It was not as daunting as you might imagine; If you can master Sudoku, you can check code... Look for the patterns. Using this approach we scanned all the HTML code and found two lines of code had run on to each other - and noticed that the string of code didn't mirror what was written at the beginning of the text para. One deletion of a pointy bracket later, problem was solved.
As Blogger.com opines: "CODE IS POETRY." And that was one helluva poetic moment.
We also learned that video clips should be under two minutes. Oops--we've had a fair few well above that. Ok, ok, the following clip exceeds the requisite by 23 seconds, but it was hilarious, so we posted it anyway.
Lists are another untapped blog tool that we have largely ignored. People love lists, according to our blogging expert Carrie Rickey, and we have deprived our reading public of this popular device. To make up for that glaring omission, we offer you a list of lists:
Finally, after our proud moment of shooting and posting a video clip, we learned from a tech-savvy 14 year old (the offspring of one of us) that Iphoto is not the preferred method to perform this task. Actual quote, "Duuhh, Mom. Of course you can do it in Iphoto, but Imovie is much better because you can edit it. I used it for my final history project, remember? If you want I can give you a lesson." So, we look forward to our upcoming lesson, and you can look forward to a cinematic tour de force, coming soon to a screen (very) near you. Well, if not a tour de force, at least some edited clips.
Blogging can be influential, interesting, funny, informative, controversial, provocative. (It can also be frivolous, trivial, inane and pointless, but those don't interest us at all.)
Forget the wave of the future, it is the wave of the present. Like any power tool, though, it must be used with care.
Elizabeth Collins, an English teacher at a private girls' high school, did not blog with caution and was fired over a post she wrote. Although she did not mention her school or student by name, Collins, known to be the blog's author, criticized a student's presentation which did not meet the assignment criteria. Unfortunately for Collins, the student happened to be the child of a major donor to the school. So Collins clearly f&%$#@ with the wrong marine even if the kid was off base. The end result is another cautionary tale demonstrating that professional decorum, or at least some common sense, must be part of your social networking plan no matter what you do for a living.
So that's the agony.
Onto the ecstasy.
An increasing number of bloggers have ended up with book contracts and movie deals. That's right--they blog, build up a following, get noticed, pitch a book or script, and their already established platform catapults them. This trend is further detailed here. Thank you, More Magazine. We also found some great strategies on how to accomplish this here. Thank you, baekdal.com.
As an aspiring writer with an agent who is flogging my book proposal far and wide, I have learned that simply writing a clever, humorous and useful volume only part of the necessary package these days. Hence, my experimentation and immersion here, where I am gathering the wisdom and skill to meet these requirements. Stay tuned for bedazzling future blog which will make me a household name in the future.
