30-Day Social Media Makeover

The Social Path is running daily tips on how to improve your social life — online, at least.

via thesocialpath.com

Check out the 30-day (all parts now posted) social media makeover from The Social Path. Published on January 2010 I think, but it’s as good now at the end the year as it was at the beginning…

You’ll learn a lot, whether it’s for yourself, your business or both. Bookmark the page and start working it through the “days”. Get back the next day, until you’re done – it’ll be awesome and you’ll thank yourself later (and during).

You’ll learn things about LinkedIn, Posterous, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, reading RSS feeds, using cool plugins and addons on Firefox and Chrome like Shareaholic (http://www.shareaholic.com/) and much more.

Good stuff, thanks Luckie and The Social Path.

What would Bilbo Baggins say to his Twitter followers?

You know what Bilbo Baggins would say about his Twitter followers?

I'm pretty sure it would be along the lines of…

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve"

Clean-up!

Go through your follow list and if you feel like that, do a little cleanup and stop following people you really don't want to follow.

Good tool for this is Tweepi.

(and it hasn't disappeared after couple of months, like so many Twitter tools do)

I like to be liberal with my follows, then list people I really like and unfollow equally liberally.

Thus, I do cleanup every three months or so, and it always make Twittering more pleasant experience…

Send scheduled updates with TweetDeck

The best (imho) Twitter client just got better…

TweetDeck now has scheduled updates!

Now I (and you too) can send tweets and update Facebook pages at the best times for maximum results, not the times you’re there pressing send. Get yours right now from: http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Here’s why I like TweetDeck:

• Good integration with Twitter, lists, etc.
• TweetDeck integrates with Twitter, Facebook (profile AND pages), LinkedIn, MySpace, Google Buzz and MySpace making updates easy.
• Need to post the same quick status update to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, no problem.
• Need to post location tagged Tweets, or unlock your badges in FourSquare, TweetDeck has’em too.
• Available for the important platforms (PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.)

What’s your excuse not to use TweetDeck?

p.s. if you want to streamline your social media usage even further, check my Twitterfeed and FriendFeed powered social media integration guide to send automatic updates to Twitter, Facebook and any service supported by Ping.fm. Do the setup once, and you don’t have to send tweets about your new blog posts manually ever again. Just don’t be an ass and use the powerful tools & tips for spam.

Where’s the ‘social’ in the social bookmarking?

warning: this is a rant. there are typos in it, and foul words like shit. deal with it. and remember to smile. it’s not that serious

Keith from Hot Blog Tips did couple of “rant” posts. One about social bookmarking and one about Blog Engage. I read the posts and left comments on both. And that made me think, where is the social bookmarking going, because now…

• it’s not really social
• it’s about promoting your own shit
• and clicking “votes” on the stuff other people already clicked
• (yes, it’s not like you’ve clicked something with 0 that often, you hit the “back” instead)
• 99% of people sharing stuff don’t even read what they promote
• they just promote because they see the numbers and think that it must be good

When was the last time you shared or bookmarked a post you actually read and think it was the best post you read that day?

This bullshit needs to stop.

And let’s be honest. Social bookmarking is about

• getting link back to your site and blog
• getting a keyworded link = SEO
• getting traffic, if your post “goes viral”

That’s why people submit their own shit to these sites. It’s not social. It’s… “look, here’s my shit”.

Why people keep wasting time on this?

Let’s build couple of hundred sites that take automatic submissions instead. And on those sites, why don’t we add automatic votes on the stuff others are automatically voting too. It wouldn’t be that much different from Digg and the one-hundred thousand clones that have followed anyway.

Popularity contest

When was the last time you submitted someone else’s post to a social bookmarking site?

That’s right, the chances are you haven’t. You just submitted your own shit. And you did it just because you think you have to and because everyone else is doing it.

Where’s the value in this? Everyone is doing it, so over time it will lose value. We’re getting close to that already. Have you seen the trend of moving back towards forums and communities like that? Towards real interaction and discussions, not numbers on a voting button. The popularity contest and this big numbers game is getting old.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop doing stupid shit, stop these games we play to be seen online, and start focusing on what matters…

Value. Good content. Community. Helping others.

Peace, Antti out.

/rant