Use Social Sharing To Extend Your Message
Three things echo my thoughts for this post. This morning, I started asking friends in the greater Boston area to help me with a project about information sharing (more when we’re ready to share it). The other day, I riffed off Rachel Happe’s presentation about how social networks improve data sharing and discovery. And tonight, I read Connie Bensen’s great post about blogging 101 out of Geoff Livingston’s Google Reader shared items before I got it out of my subscription to Connie’s blog. The basic thought is this: finding ways to share your information, to move it along a series of networks, will improve your message’s value.
Seek Out Channels
By channels, look for ways social networks can get the word out about your blog, to people who want to know more about what you’re talking about. Now, this is a tricky thing. You can’t just start spamming people. For instance, folks who use Twitter only to re-tweet that they’ve post a blog are quickly unfollowed. But by starting a conversation, and being pertinent, and getting people’s take on things, and by using social networks for more than just reposting your blogs, I think there are some great ways to deliver awareness and value back to your primary media. Here are some thoughts:
- Use Twitter to bring questions about your post back to your blog itself. “Do YOU think social media is more PR than advertising? I blog about it here…”.
- Use Facebook to republish your RSS feed, and apps like blogfriends and others to give you more presence there.
- Use Google Reader’s sharing feature to promote some of your posts so that people who subscribe to your shared items feed can sample some of your posts before considering subscribing to your blog or podcast.
- Use other social networks to at least link back to your media wherever they give you a spot to place a URL.
- Sign your emails with your blog address.
- Make sure your blog is on your business cards.
Seek Out Google Reader Users
I’m starting to see how users of Google Reader banding together might create Rache Happe’s “information arbitrage” system. I saw it tonight with how Geoff Livingston’s promotion of Connie Bensen’s post drew my attention, and that I had already shared it myself before realizing Geoff had shared it. Some folks subscribe to Geoff’s items. Others might subscribe to mine. But now that we BOTH covered it, that story is DEFINITELY going further than just my RSS reader.
So, one tactic might be to seek out Google Reader Shared Items users, subscribe to their shared feeds, and then consider “promoting” some of what they’ve shared, to give stories that matter their own legs. In a way, it’d be like a far less graceful Techmeme. Right? It’d be sending certain stories further across the network.
Comments on Blog Posts
Other people are likely talking about what you’re talking about. Seek them out. Spend a little time in Technorati or Google Blogsearch, looking for those keywords or phrases that describe what YOU like writing or podcasting about. See if there are synergies and connect to those people by leaving comments. Comments are a great way to reach out and meet people of like mindedness, and it’s a great way to seed a few comment areas with your blog URL, so that folks can find more of what makes you interesting on YOUR home turf. Make sense?
Extending the Message
Not every blog post should go out and touch thousands and thousands of people. But sometimes, there are things you want to shout from the rafters. Those posts deserve a little more love and affection, and they deserve a little bit more effort to try and give them the chance to move further out into the ecosystem. There are ways I’m not yet thinking enough about. For instance, what if you read the occasional post into Utterz. Then, some of the audioblogging crowd would get it and enjoy it. What if you made a campaign to get more email subscribers? That would get the message out there further.
So, what do you think? What are other ways I’m missing? How have you experienced what I wrote about? Where have you seen extentions and ripples across the waters of making social media?
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Comments
I like the idea of using Utterz to do an audio version of a “from the rafters” post.
Old school forums work for me.
Chris - great post on a timely topic. As the person responsible for leading our companies charge on how new media fits into our overall marketing/PR/branding mix, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (and experimenting) lately about the best approach. As you suggested in this post, the key is finding the best way to get your message heard (personal or professional in a tasteful manner.
Like you, I spend a lot of time (probably too much) on Twitter, Facebook, other’s blogs etc. I see how some people like Jeremiah and Scoble do a great job at self-promotion while delivering value through linking to other folks insightful posts, videos, podcasts etc. Others (I won’t name names) are not quite as skilled.
The one thing that I am slowly learning is that getting one’s message out requires two specific skills:
Patience - unlike web 1.0 marketing, social media/marketing is not about “pray and spray” but rather small,thoughtful ongoing activities. You’ve touched on most of these activies above but I would add podcasting to the mix as well as it gives one the ability to tap into an additional channel i.e. iTunes (and other podcast syndicators) to spread the word.
Continuous delivery of value to others - one of the reasons why people read blogs like yours, Dave Winers and other thought leaders is that you are constantly delivering value back to your readers. This may seem obvious but many people on Twitter and on FB sometimes forget that it’s okay to point to other blogger’s posts. It’s also okay to start debates or solicit opinions on FB and Twitter that are for the greater good of the social media movement — not for individual gain.
Thanks for calling out this valuable topic - I look forward to seeing other’s comments.
Aaron
Great post Chris. I read your line about “being pertinent” as “being patient” (scanning too quickly) and found myself nodding my head. Too often people in charge of brand are driven for near term results and leveraging social media doesn’t play that game. I remember early efforts to “promote” via newsgroups and see a lot of parallels with what you’re talking about today.
Time to go check out the posts by Connie and Geoff!
Loved the picture and the post made me feel I need to do more. I am not a natural facebook inhabitant. Something about it leaves me cold. However, it is powerful and so I must try harder with it.
I agree that commenting is powerful and it builds a steady stream of visitors and subscribers as long as I make an effort to be relevant and respond to the post.
It would be a shame to just use Twitter for blog announcements because it can be so much fun and you get really connected to people and also understand what is happening in other parts of the world. Thanksgiving was such a vague thing in my mind till through Twitter I discovered that millions of people are feasting while we in Europe are not.
I must experiment with Utterz and I am planning to use Spinvox in my post on Monday. There is another thing that Is possibly called Ching where people can leave voice messages on a site and that could be interesting.
Nice post Chris - I think it gets back to network theory - it’s been interesting to me how I keep running into and interacting with people across different channels and with each discovery on a different channel the connection to that network of people becomes stronger.
Has anyone seen the interactive flash network view of The L Word (great show BTW) at http://www.ourchart.com/browse - unfortunately you now have to log on to see it now but it’s pretty cool.
Anyway - my point is that I ran across Aaron Strout early in 2007 then got reintroduced to him later in the year who introduced me over email to Bill Johnson whose roundtable I went to in SF whose Facebook group I am now on and I touch base with him occasionally by phone. Independently I was introduced to Mukund Mohan by Giovanni Rodriguez but it turns out he knows Aaron and Bill. From Twitter it turns out Mukund also knows Guy Kawasaki who I know from working at a start-up he funded. My point is not to describe who I know but to point out that I interact with all of these individual on multiple channels and with each touch point, the relationship becomes stronger and it is a virtuous circle. Also it is by using Twitter that I figured out that some of these people were connected. And it turns out you are part of this network as well - and I ended up tripping across you at a conference and had you not introduced yourself, I wouldn’t have realized that we actually have a number of connections.
Hence, trusted connections and filters - I am more apt to trust you sooner because you know a number of people in my existing network.
And now…I must run up to Maine to check out Foster’s clambake so that party guests next summer don’t end up with bad lobster :)
Hi Chris,
I’m glad that you found my Blogging 101 post helpful.
In regard to networking I totally agree that there are so many ways to creatively connect. You’ve touched on many. I think that it’s important to have a message worth passing on. I’ve cut back on the frequency of my blogging in order to have more quality.
@Rachel- and I hung out with Guy at TechCrunch40, thanks to @Pistachio hooking us up, and I talked with Giovanni Rodriguez on the phone for 1.5 hours last night, so at least in this particular fishbowl, the feedback loops are tight. We can use these as accelerators and gates, I think.
Based on your presentation, I’m starting an experiment. When we get the base of it started, we’ll invite you in. : )
@Connie - more than interesting. I think it’s useful and a great reference.
@DefogMyBlog - Oh, I love Twitter for much more than a blog linking tool. MUCH. I love it for conversations.
@Jim - well, patient is nice, too. : )
@DrMani - I bet you have a seminal post on your blog marketing tactics. Care to share a link?
@Aaron- learning how to interact with the “natives” seems to be the strongest challenge for transitioning from Marketing1.0 to Social Media. I think it pays off.
Hey Chris, thanks for the shout out. I totally agree, and yes it gets so much further than just a post on a blog.
Community participation led to me meeting you(virtually), which led to you liking my content and vice versa, you asked me to share my reads, so I started using Google Reader. The rest is history.
All because we both gave and interacted, rather than just posting on our blogs. It’s about the people! And I’m glad to know you, Chris.
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptI saw it tonight with how Geoff Livingston’s promotion of Connie Bensen’s post drew my attention, and that I had already shared it myself before realizing Geoff had shared it. Some folks subscribe to Geoff’s items. … […]
Excellent thoughts, Chris, I’m always looking for ways to leverage information sharing… which translates into ‘getting my blog read by more people’! ;-)
Things that work well for me - pinging soon after blogging (Pingoat.com and Pingomatic.com), listing it on StumbleUpon, Sphinn and Twitter (if someone hasn’t done it within a ‘reasonable’ interval after I blogged it), and for the ‘rafters posts’, sending an email out to my list of a few thousand readers, explicitly inviting them to re-blog it, Sphinn/Digg/Stumble/Tweet it.
But the ways you mention are higher leverage, more subtle, and DEFINITELY things I’ll weave into my blog marketing going forward.
Thanks again.
All success
Dr.Mani