"handmade • so.colorful" by origamidon

Back when blogging first started, I remember hearing loads of people criticising it for allowing people with “nothing to say” to have a say. The criticism usually included a comment along the lines of, “nobody cares what you had for dinner”.

When Twitter started to get popular, I remember hearing exactly the same comments.

So – let’s talk about whether you should tweet (or blog) about food.

I can see why you might not, if it’s only to say “Tonight I’m having stew.”

However, I think it’s more interesting if some out of the ordinary happens. Like this:

Just having a Minted Lamb Big Soup. Love it, except they appear to have forgotten to include any meat. Not so big soup.

— Ben Barden (@benbarden) January 11, 2012

Or is that just as mundane as any other food-related tweet?

How about if you’re a chef?

Discussion

What do you think, do you tweet what you eat?

"malady of modernity" by Will Lion

Do you ever feel as though there are simply too many places for you to go and post new content?

Here are some social bits and pieces for you to ponder:

• Facebook fan page – I use my fan page to share new content from my two blogs.
• Facebook profile – Now that people can subscribe to Facebook profiles, I’m a bit lost as to whether I should post content on my profile or on my fan page. The fan page is named after me, so I guess I could set up pages for my blogs.
• Google Plus profile – I’ve attracted quite a few followers on Google Plus, mainly due to the “shared circles” feature. However, I don’t really post there much.
• Google Plus fan page – I have a fan page for Quick Blog Tips, but don’t really use it.
• Twitter profile – I love Twitter – it’s the social site I use the most. However, I make life a bit more difficult for myself by having not one, but two Twitter accounts. One is my personal account, the other is @quickblogtips.

There’s also LinkedIn, which I don’t use for posting new content. Some people also record videos and post them on YouTube. This is an outlet I’m not currently using. I’m sure you can think of more sites, too.

How much content do you post on social media sites? Unless you only post “metacontent” – such as posting a Twitter tip on Twitter, or a Facebook tip on Facebook – I don’t see how it’s possible to come up with original content on every social site without some degree of automation. And I’m not keen on automation – it feels so impersonal.

Traditional content outlets

If we look beyond the social sites, there are other places where you might publish content.

• Blogs: in my view, there’s still a place for blogs. I think it’s really important not to neglect your blog and only post on social media sites. Historically, social media sites haven’t provided us with a good way to trawl through a user’s archives. This is where blogs are brilliant: you can browse by category, or by date. Try doing that on Twitter.
• Guest posts: writing content for other sites is a great way to get your name out there – fast. I’ve only recently started writing guest posts – the results have already been excellent. Of course, you do need to come up with new content for your guest posts – you can’t just copy your existing blog posts to other sites. Well you could, but you shouldn’t.
• Comments: whether you’re commenting on someone else’s site or replying to comments on your own, discussing the content you’ve just been reading can lead to wonderful things. Sometimes it’s simply a case of having a chat and sharing some views; sometimes you might make a minor breakthrough and come up with a new post idea for your blog, or a business idea that you could run with. Comments that further the original topic are of great value.
• Forums: take any method of communication that’s been around for years, and you’ll probably find plenty of people who say it’s dying out. Maybe the best times for forums are in the past, but I still use a couple of forums and I think they’re well worth looking into.
• Newsletters: I just set up a blogging newsletter – Weekly Blogging. I’ve opted to use it as a weekly round-up, with a recap of content from the last week, some classic content, some useful links and a short editorial. This isn’t a huge amount of fresh content if you read my blogs as the posts go up, but it’s a great option for those who want a weekly digest of blogging tips and resources. If I was writing one or two completely new articles for the newsletter, I imagine it wouldn’t last very long – or my blogs would be affected as I’d run out of ideas.

How to find old content

Earlier, I said that social media sites haven’t provided us with a good way to trawl through a user’s archives. However, this may be changing with the introduction of Facebook’s Timeline. This feature provides an interesting way to go back through a person’s life and see what they’ve been up to. Of course, it relies on manual intervention to insert the events that occurred before you joined Facebook.

I also think that blogs require careful organisation if you want people to find the oldest content in the archives. Although date-based navigation may facilitate this, it’s not much use for a how-to site or anything that isn’t really time-relevant. Categories and static pages can help to point people in the right direction.

How to manage your content outlets?

So how on earth do you keep up with all these places to post new content, without simply writing a comment once and automatically posting it everywhere else?

I think you have to make a choice how many sites you’ll use. I’ve read so many blog posts that recommend one or more of the above sites. Between those blog posts, if you followed everyone’s advice, you’d be posting everywhere, everywhen. That’s simply not sustainable in the long run.

Find the sites you like. But also know where your audience is. If you’re just getting started, you probably don’t have an audience yet. This means you can probably pick and choose your content outlets. The main one for me is Twitter. When I do post on Google Plus I get replies, but I just don’t think of much that I’d want to post there that I’m not already saying on Twitter. The same applies to Facebook.

I’m not keen on automatically cross-posting content across sites, mainly because there’s a good chance people will see the same content more than once. Thinking about it some more though… advertising is all about saturation – I’ve heard that people may not click an ad until they’ve seen it more than a dozen times. So does it follow that people may be more likely to click your links and read your content if it’s everywhere?

I’d like to my content to travel everywhere, but I don’t have time to write original content on every social media site in existence.

Discussion

What would you do? How do you manage your content outlets?

"99-97=2 Yellow Balloons (75)" by frank3.0

Last week, I ran a social media experiment where I chose to stop sharing my own posts on social media sites, and spend more time sharing content from other people. As the experiment is now over, here are some of my observations, along with what happens next.

Readers Still Viewed My Posts

During the experiment, I put out roughly the same amount of content as in a typical week. Three posts at Quick Blog Tips, a couple of posts at benbarden.com. I think the quality of content was good, and not really any different from the quality of posts I have posted in the past.

Despite my lack of self-promotion, many readers still read my posts. In fact, my visitor and pageview stats were a bit better than normal.

I’m Writing More Content

I don’t mean blog posts – I mean social media comments. During this experiment, I didn’t really use Facebook, and I only used Google Plus a bit. But this week, I talked on Twitter – a lot.

What does this mean? Either I’m making people unfollow me because I’m talking too much – or I’m engaging with many more people than I usually do. Probably a bit of both.

Link Love Posts Are Good

Although this wasn’t the point of the “no self-promotion” idea, publishing a link love post seemed like a good thing to do at the same time.

In the past, I’ve never been a fan of link love posts. I’m still not keen on them if a blog contains very little content other than a weekly link love post. I’ve also had comments where people say, “Why would I share someone else’s post when I could share my own?”

What I’ve found is that linking to other people is one of the best possible ways to connect. I do think you need to keep your link posts quite short though – 7 links works for me – anything more than 10 and I think it’s going a bit far.

Linking Out Can Draw People In

Over at Quick Blog Tips, a couple of the people I linked to stopped by to leave a comment saying thanks. This is awesome – they not only appreciated the link, it got them to check out my blog.

Hopefully this goes without saying, but I’d suggest you don’t link to anything unless you think it’s worth sharing. Also, I strongly discourage using this as a way to get people to your blog. It’s a nice bonus, but shouldn’t be the reason you’re linking out.

The point here is that when you link to someone else, they do notice – and as mentioned above, it’s a great way to connect.

There’s More Sharing Going On

Because I’m not sharing my own stuff, there’s a bit of breathing space on my social media accounts. I can now share much more content from other authors without worrying about flooding everyone with links. Using Buffer is a great way to space out your tweets.

You Really Notice the Self-Promoters

I’ll hold my hands up here – I was a big self-promoter before I kicked off this experiment. Having held back on pushing every blog post I write on every social media site I use, it’s now much more obvious when I see someone else doing the same thing.

Even if you manage to hide the fact you mostly share your own stuff and new people keep following you, it’s a major turn-off when almost every tweet you post is a link to your own blog – especially when it ends with “please retweet”!

Do you do this? Or do you know anyone else who does? Most of the “big connectors” I can think of are very good at promoting a bit of their own content, and a lot of everybody else’s. There are only a few who constantly share their own stuff.

Twitter is My #1 Social Media Site

Although I also use Facebook and Google Plus, I’ve found that Twitter is the best place to connect with people. Yes, this is 100% my opinion, and you’re welcome to disagree. I just find that it’s too hard to find new people on Facebook, and I use Google Plus more for reading other people’s content than for interacting.

As always, your mileage may vary, and I’d be interested to find out which social media site you use the most – please leave a comment with your thoughts.

What Now?

This has been an eye-opening experiment. Although I’m not going to completely ban myself from sharing my own content, I will definitely keep publishing the link love posts, and keep any self-promotion to an absolute minimum.

One approach could be to include one or two of my own posts at the end of each link love post, but clearly marking them as my own content. Hopefully the link love post could then get a bit of exposure to everyone on the list.

It’s not a particularly original idea, but I think it could work. Let me know what you think.

Discussion

Have you been following me throughout this experiment? Do you prefer to see fewer self-promotional tweets? How much do you promote your own stuff?

"Lab" by howzey

Whenever I write a new blog post, I share it on Twitter. Sometimes I share it on Google Plus and/or Facebook. Sometimes I share it a couple of times, if I think it’s one of my better posts.

In contrast, I don’t feel like I’m sharing enough from other people. I’ve tried to do more of this recently, which I think has worked quite well. But the ratio of my posts to other people’s posts is a bit unbalanced.

What I’d like to try doing is to spend the next week only sharing other people’s posts, and not my own. I’ll continue to update my blogs, so whenever I write a new post, I won’t share it on any social media site. I don’t use any tools that automatically share my posts on Twitter or Facebook, so that won’t be an issue.

The experiment starts right after I share this post (I have to get the word out somehow!), and ends on Friday 16th December.

What You Can Do To Help:

There’s not much point in doing this experiment if I don’t share anything at all. I’m always looking for great content, so if you’ve written a post I might enjoy or you’ve found someone else’s post that you really liked, please tell me about it. The best way to do this is to follow me on Twitter, and reply to me.

I’d appreciate a link to this post – perhaps your followers will send me some links, too. If you’d like to share any posts I publish during the experiment, that would be much appreciated.

Discussion

How often do you publish self-promotional messages on social media sites? How much content do you share that you didn’t create?

"Plurk" by daysies

Does anyone remember Plurk? Back in 2008 I remember discussing the pros and cons of Twitter vs. Plurk. Although Plurk is still around, everyone I used to know on Plurk moved over to Twitter. I haven’t gone back to Plurk in a few years.

There is a simple but important reason why Klout harks back to the days of Plurk: it’s due to the score.

Klout vs. Karma

At Plurk, “Karma” divided opinion. Your karma went up depending on a number of activities – I forget most of them. What I do remember is that when people went away for a week, their karma dropped. Sound familiar?!

Klout might not be a service you use directly – it aggregates your social media activity into a single score. So it’s not the same type of site as Plurk. However, there’s a parallel to be drawn between your Klout score and Plurk karma. It’s really just a score – it might not seem “right” to everyone who uses the service – and probably has a way to go before it starts to mean anything.

Is a Single Score Useful?

Some have said Klout is useful, despite the score metrics changing as new services are pulled in. Others have said, basically, nobody cares about your Klout score.

My take on all of this? Don’t take statistics at face value, and in isolation of other figures. It’s like bounce rate: if your bounce rate is a certain percentage, it doesn’t mean you’re doing everything right (or wrong). It’s much more useful to look at stats in conjunction with other stats, to understand what might have affected them – instead of saying “my Klout score is 47″.

My score went up a few points since I linked Google Plus. Does that mean I’m more engaged than before? Am I a better person to follow than I was last week? Perhaps – but I wouldn’t take the score as gospel.

Don’t Obsess Over a Score

I remember a lot of Plurk users saying that Plurk karma was annoying as it went down due to inactivity, but didn’t go up in equal measures due to activity. Who’s to say what is good activity and bad activity? Is simply being active enough?

The Klout score isn’t inherently a bad thing unless you take it too literally. Will I get a higher score if I get an iPhone and link to services such as Instagram? I don’t really bother taking photos at the moment – am I going to become a more interesting person to follow if I force myself to take photos of crap just to get some content on that service? How about if I sign up for Tumblr and Blogger despite the fact I use WordPress?

Perhaps a better way to increase your Klout score without inflating it is to look at this: 6 Unofficial Ways to Increase Your Klout Score. This focuses more on adding value than simply boosting your score by any means necessary.

Discussion

Did you ever use Plurk? What did you think of Plurk karma? How valuable is Klout?

"In the air, with navigation" by Brain farts

Update: Brian from Blog Engage has replied to this post – see his comments below.

I found this link on Twitter: Blog Engage website navigation guide for new users. It’s great to provide help guides to help users understand how a site works, right?

In this case, I’m not sure if the guide is particularly useful. There are several things that don’t work – this post lists a few of the issues along with some constructive feedback to make the guide better.

1. You shouldn’t need to write a “website navigation guide”.

Sorry, but this has to be said. Website navigation should be so easy, people don’t have to think about it. The very existence of a guide that explains the different navigation types on a website is a red flag for me. It suggests that the website needs to stop and think about whether the navigation could be simplified.

2. But it’s actually not a navigation guide.

In fact, the guide is more of a sitemap or an overview to the features on the site. So perhaps it’s not named appropriately. Maybe I’m just being picky here.

I don’t think the guide is really needed. It doesn’t say much about the site – it just lists the name of each section with a short description and a couple of screenshots. It would be a lot quicker just to click a few of the links and find out for yourself what the site is all about.

3. A zipped PDF? Seriously?

If I click a link on a website, I usually expect it to load a new web page with the information I require. Sure, if I’m buying some music or downloading a form that I need to print out and sign, a PDF is fine. However, this navigation guide doesn’t make sense to be a downloadable file. Why not just make a web page out of it?

It would be one thing if I clicked a link and got a PDF. But instead, I got a ZIP file, which I have to download and extract before I can read the PDF. Not only that, but the PDF is nearly 5MB – which is probably why it’s zipped, I guess. But from the perspective of a potential reader, this is a really painful way to read content.

Look at it this way – what if you published zipped PDFs on your blog instead of blog posts that you can click on, view directly in your browser without any plugins, and comment on?

4. And Finally…

The page I linked to at the start of this post has a bit of an identity crisis going on:

In this PDF file we will walk you, our new and advanced members through the entire Blog Engage website

To be fair, this does highlight that it’s a walkthrough of the website, rather than a navigation guide. Maybe it’s just me who expected something different.

However, the big error here is that it’s for new and advanced members. Surely an advanced member already knows what’s on the site? Also, wouldn’t it be better to target the content to a specific group of members? In my view, it’s not for advanced members.

To summarise

Don’t get me wrong: a walkthrough, or “site tour”, isn’t necessarily a bad idea in itself. However, when presented in the format that we see here, it simply isn’t practical.

My suggestions would be:

1. Ditch the PDF.
2. Put the content on a web page.
3. Call it “Explore Blog Engage” or something similar.
4. Lose a lot of the heavy graphics that makes the PDF so big, and keep to the basics: section names, one or two screenshots, and a list of the most appealing features.

This would surely be a lot more useful to new and potential members (remember it might also get more people to start using the site).

Discussion

Have you read the guide? What do you think of it?

"african pygmy hedgehog" by Adam Foster | Codefor

Are you someone who has views on lots of different topics? Do you tweet about a variety of things without sticking to a single topic? Have you ever found it difficult to isolate the specifics of what you could blog about?

Maybe Klout can help.

You see, Klout has just told me that I’m influential about 10 topics. Four of them were automatically suggested by the Klout website, while the remaining six appear because people gave me Klout for those topics.

Below are some of my topics.

Klout: Influential Topics

Aside from the mildly amusing comment that “Klout believes you are influential about Klout”, this list shows some of the topics where people think I have influence.

This may not be of interest to everyone. A very inactive social media user may not have many influential topics listed – if any. Or they could be largely irrelevant. Also, experts in their relevant field may already know exactly what they’re influential about.

I believe there are people who just start talking about things as a point of interest, without realising they may be building influence in those areas. Social Media is an area I’m getting into more, but it’s not what I do for a living, nor is it something where I’d call myself an expert. But I do have plenty to say about it. I clearly talk about it quite a bit.

Note also that my career (web development) isn’t listed. You could say that Web Design is closely related; perhaps it’s simply a matter of terminology. But design and development are very different things. I’m certainly not a designer. However, I don’t write a lot of posts that would be of interest to other developers, so I understand not having development listed there.

The point here is that I can see what I’m already talking about, which gives me possible ideas for future blog topics – or maybe a new blog. I don’t think I will be starting another blog for the time being, as I closed several earlier in the year. Who knows though – there might be a new idea that jumps out.

Discussion

What are your Klout topics? Are they what you would expect? Do any of them give you ideas for new blog topics, or a new blog?

This week, I noticed a new Facebook feature: subscriptions. These allow you to subscribe to the updates on a person’s profile page. It’s very similar to adding someone to a circle on Google Plus.

Once you subscribe to someone’s updates, you can click on the “Subscriptions” link on your profile to customise which updates you’ll see from them. Here’s a screenshot of the available options:

Facebook subscription options

That’s a pretty good list – I especially like the option to unsubscribe from “Games”. I do play some Facebook games, but I’m not keen on seeing the game-related posts that flood people’s walls.

Once you’ve subscribed to someone’s updates, they will appear on your News Feed.

What about Facebook Likes?

We now have a way to like a Facebook page and subscribe to a Facebook profile. All of the updates will appear on your News Feed.

If a company has a page and an individual has a profile, you can like the page and subscribe to the profile. No problem there.

However, what about people who have set up a Facebook page, and who also have a profile? This is the situation I’m in right now – and I know other bloggers have done the same. Having a Facebook page under your own name is a really good way to share content from multiple blogs, instead of having to manage a separate page for each blog.

Likes vs Subscriptions

One of the annoyances I’ve found with subscriptions is that we now have a list of profiles we’ve subscribed to, but the list is only accessible from your own profile page. Currently, there’s no way to see your subscriptions from the Facebook homepage (when you’re viewing the News Feed).

Thinking about it though, there’s also no way to see a list of pages you like without digging into your profile page, and the list that’s presented there is hardly the easiest way to unsubscribe from those pages. I do prefer the layout of the Subscriptions page.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Facebook recently say that groups will eventually be replaced by pages? I wonder if anyone who had a group converted it to a page, and is now wondering if they could just do what they need on their profile? If so, how likely is it that everyone will re-subscribe for the second time?

A recent post from Tom Anderson (ex-MySpace) highlights the confusion:

FB just created a feature where you can “subscribe” to profiles. They asked me if I wanted to convert my “page” into a simpler profile. Complicated? I suppose.
- Tom Anderson

The only difference I can think of is that by subscribing to a profile, you avoid making the statement that you “like” whatever you’re subscribing to. As I wrote in Should Old Content Appear First in Google?, perhaps we do need a way to separate “liking” from subscribing.

However, until the duplication is cleaned up, we’re left with a confusing interface and the potential decision, “Do I want to like this page, or subscribe to the person’s profile?”

What does the future hold?

Maybe this doesn’t matter. For all I know, we may be moving to a simpler, more streamlined Facebook, with less overlap and more consistency.

But I’m sceptical. It seems like some of the recent changes to Facebook, such as subscriptions and being able to “share” a post, are very similar to what we already have at Google Plus. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I can see the new features having positive results. It’s just that the features don’t fit in all that well with how Facebook is organised. Hopefully things will be a bit more organised in future.

Discussion

What do you think of the new features at Facebook? Have you used them?

Is Facebook becoming more complex? How could it be simplified?

"the rain's romantic pour" by ashley rose

If you’re on Twitter, Facebook or Google+, do you post a “goodbye” or “goodnight” message before you disappear?

I don’t. It feels similar to going away on holiday and leaving your doors wide open. Are you inviting spammers to take advantage of the fact you won’t be around? Or perhaps a potential attacker might try and get into your site while you sleep.

I’m not really all that paranoid, just cautious. So instead of saying “I’m going offline”, I’ll just sneak away. This also applies if I’m stepping out for a moment, perhaps for some food or drink, as I’ll be back soon.

I may be reading Twitter without joining in, so I might not have said “Hello” yet!

Generally speaking, instead of saying goodbye on social media, I don’t say anything. However, on instant messenger software, if I’m having a chat with someone then I will say goodbye before I leave. It just doesn’t seem necessary on social media.

What do you think?

Do you say goodbye when going offline?

Diamond Dash on Google Plus - Image by Ben Barden

Social sites want you to use them. A lot.

Sure, you can make new friends, crack jokes, share links, and generally have fun.

So what do you do when there’s nothing left to talk about?

Look at the friends you’ve known for years. The people you see the most. The ones you see for a chat every now and again, to catch up on what’s happening.

How often have you not had much to talk about? In that case, instead of just talking, would you go and do something – such as seeing a movie, going away, or playing a game?

Video games, board games, card games, sports, and so on… games have been part of our social life for many years.

Games are good. Whether you enjoy puzzle games such as Angry Birds, Bejeweled, or Collapse, or strategy games such as Zombie Lane or Dragons of Atlantis, even something as simple as beating everybody’s high score can make your friends want to challenge you!

Games create healthy competition. Games are fun. You can waste a lot of time on them – but as is often the case – everything in moderation.

Right?

(Speaking of Google Plus – I’d like to challenge you to beat my high scores on Google Plus. Particularly on Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Collapse, and Diamond Dash.)