Webdesign, CSS, Social Media, Tech & Geek Stuff » media

Social Media Sites (an update)

mr-mojo-risin — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:20:38 +0000

Here’s an attempt to build up a little list of the most important social media sites.

As it is far from being complete, it will be expanded from time to time…

Social media sites

mr-mojo-risin — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:22:05 +0000

News aggregators:

friendfeed.com
Friendfeed works as a feed of your social community activities, one adds services like flickr, picasa, twitter, google reader, digg, stumbleupon, del.icio.us, youtube, fast.fm and of course own blogs sharing the own post/messages/links with other people and commenting the interesting stuff from others. Seriously good source of hot news right from the streets!

toluu.com
A service to share and tag rss feeds and to find people of the same interest.
Quite new, one still needs an invite code – if you need one drop me a message.

delicious.com
Social bookmarking site, which recently launched a new, fresh layout, for sharing, tagging links, creating networks with friends/users of the same interest.

digg.com
Vote for news links, pictures or videos of your interest and help creating the famous digg effect, a self-made DOS attack on your website, if you’re lucky, you (or your server) must be prepared. Lately rumors said that alpha user take money for pushing news to the frontpage, other users claim to banned from Google Adsense due to the unexpected and sudden traffic created by the digg community.

Create your own community:

Ning.com
This is a platform where one can set up his very own community about any interest, offering video and photo uploads, discussion rooms, messaging, comments, fully editible profiles…
All a fully grown up community needs, so if one already gather a larger group of the same interest, this is a fine service to establish a exchange of thoughts and opinions.

Blog Communities:

Blogcatalog.com
Create groups for your own blogs and gather followers to promote events or interesting posts. Start or join groups for gaining from the strenght of the community. Interact via private messages and so called broadcasts you might send to your follwers. It’s got the social activity componet, too so one is able to see what fellow other bloggers are interested. Providing a widget showing the fans of your blog. A good, thus active and helpful member, might derive traffic from here.

mybloglog.com
Yahoo’s mybloglog is pretty similar to blogcatalog, but offering much more service to integrate, plus detailed statistics for your blog for one week or more is one chooses the paid version.

fuelmyblog.com
Voting site, if a blog gathers enough votes to reach the home page, one should better be prepared for a shitload of traffic.

blogflux.com
Blog Directory offering several paid services, like featured listing in a toplist and stuff.

Photo Communities:

flickr.com
Very large photo community with free restricted accounts and Premium accounts for 25$ a year. Yahoo.com scared off some users by forcing them to quit or to get a Yahoo ID and after that enabling videos for upload. But the community is still alive and kickin! Lately they set up a deal with Getty Images so in the future users might be able to sell their flickr pics via Getty Images, which could be interesting.

Related:
picasa.com
devianart.com

Social Media – get some tailwind out of communities

mr-mojo-risin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:52:51 +0000

Viral Marketing, Social Marketing and digg-effect these buzz words symbolize the wet fantasy of many marketeers, making a product, brand or website the latest hype without spending a multi zillion Dollar budget on advertisement, sponsoring and PR.
The good news: Yes, it’s possible, no doubt. The bad one: It’s hard work combined with sensitiveness, knowledge and a certain dose of luck.
Simply dropping posts in forums, flooding social bookmarking sites with links and lean back, is like waiting for a good fairy granting three wishes, it might probably never happen.

There will never be a manual for the buckshot, but it’s no rocket-science either:

Examine several services and communities for their relevance according your product or the compatibility of their users.
Learn as much as possible about the offered features and tools and how to use them to your advantage, i.e the shout function on digg.com or broadcasts on blogcatalog.com .
Create rooms, groups and further communities dealing with your topics and invite people who could be interested in your affairs. Share your knowledge and consider giving informations about your competitors (in a objective manner) and point out why your service/product is a better choice.
Be honest, avoid vast exaggerations or desperately trying to hide weak points of your product. They be unvealed and this will be a backlash for and won’t increase your credibility.
Use the feedback of the community, like emails, comments or blog reviews, learn from them and improve your product. Don’t forget to give credits back, so the critics might be teased and report in a positive manner about you.
A community is a give and take – or at least it should be – so take part and comment, vote and pay attention to other users postings, they will reward it. Plus you will collect valuable information about your target audience.
Keep your account up to date and fresh, nobody will interact with a nominal member.
Do not act too aggressive, less is more sometimes. If you bother other users too much they will block you, mark you as spammer, kick you out of the community. Be sensitive, treat others like you would like to be treated. Messing it up, your good reputation and credibility will be annihilated and barely can be reestablished. So handle with care!
Additional helping and useful informations that enrich the community related to your topic should be shared, too. This will integrate you as an active and worthy member and draw attention on your concerns. Only repeating marketing slogans like mantras is scaring and boring to people.
Engage your friends, family, coworkers to join, vote for you or recommend your product and giving you an initial aid to start. Mostly a certain critical mass has to be reached after that the community gets aware of you and the rest is surfing the wave !

Good luck on your mission!

Webdesign, CSS, Social Media, Tech & Geek Stuff » media

Social Media Sites (an update)

Blogging

Photo Communities

Bookmarks

News Aggregators

Status

Music

Comments

Video

Books

Friendship

Miscellaneous