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Seth Godin hits the nail on the head in reference to using the Web and social media for your business:

The problem is no longer budget. The problem is no longer access to tools.

The problem is the will to get good at it.

There also remains a very pervasive fear within companies (especially at the C-level) to opening up. I recently said to someone, “It’s time to expose yourself under that kimono.” We’ll see if I get that project or not… *smile*

Unfortunately, too many mid-level and junior-level employees are forced to spend a disproportionate amount of their time figuring out how to justify things to their bosses and how to create corporate policies that will calm executives’ nerves. If your company needs to spend a year developing appropriate, legally-binding, bullet-proof, fully documented corporate social media policies before someone at your organization can get on Twitter and say, “hi!” … you’re f-cked.

image courtesy of shutterstock

P.S. That’s not me in the picture…

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Join me for my latest obsession: Surprise.

In thinking about Surprise and how it relates to my business and the Web in general, I realize that there’s absolutely not enough surprise on the Web.

How often do you visit a website and get surprised?

Sure there are crazy, silly, surprising videos on YouTube. And those often spread like wildfire. But what about corporate sites? Startup sites? Business sites? News sites? Personal blogs? Is there ever any Surprise there?

Whether it’s with the copywriting, design or something else, where’s the Surprise on the Web?

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A recent study by GroupM Search and comScore looked at the relationship between search marketing and social media. It’s an interesting read.

The crux of the report is that people who are exposed to a brand via social media are more likely to search directly for that brand (or search terms that are lower level/closer to the brand) and/or click on paid search advertising (on search engines).

What that means is that social media plays a role in influencing how people search and use search engines. Here are some interesting data points:

• Consumers who are exposed to a brand’s social media efforts and paid search programs are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products (compared to users who only saw paid search).
• 50% increase in clickthrough rates in paid search when consumers were exposed to influenced social media and paid search.
• The clickthrough rate on paid search for searchers using a brand’s product name in the query increased from 4.5% to 11.8% for those that were exposed to social media. And for organic search, the clickthrough rate increased 2.4x.

Chris Copeland, CEO of GroupM Search said:

As advertisers consider the allocation of paid media and the greatest opportunity for return, the topics of media discovery and influenced social discovery must be a part of the conversation. Blending paid, earned and owned media, and putting your brand in places where it can be discovered and part of the natural conversation, will enable advertisers to influence the outcome of intention expressed by consumers, and capture this heavily engaged audience.

None of this may huge, revolutionary news, but it does speak to the importance of looking at social media from an integrated perspective – combined with other elements of marketing via organic search, paid search, etc. And furthermore, the ROI in terms of lead generation can be measured.

But as I said yesterday, don’t increase leads until you’ve optimized conversion. And recently I was in a discussion about how social media increases conversion. Is that true? Can social media marketing increase conversions?

Based on the information in this report, it’s reasonable to argue that social media marketing can increase the quality of leads (and not just the volume). It’s possible to hone in on, and understand intent through search and how social media exposure affects that intent. And as people are exposed (and I would say involved with – since exposure sounds like you’re just broadcasting stuff at people, which isn’t what social media is about) to social media their intent is more focused and driven towards lead conversion.

Leads are great. Without leads you can’t run a business, because you can’t sell anything. But leads aren’t customers. They’re potential customers. And the real trick isn’t in generating more and more and more leads, it’s in converting them at the highest rate possible.

Once conversion rates are high, you can work to put as many leads as possible into the top of the funnel. Crank it up! But increasing lead generation won’t completely make up for a poorly converting site; it’s like trying to fill a straw with a waterfall, what’s the point? Better to find out how to make the straw bigger, then invest in the waterfall.

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I’m a big fan of Twitter. It’s clearly gone mainstream in a number of ways and brings significant value for maintaining relationships, finding new ones, etc. But you can’t build authority and thought leadership through Twitter or other microblogging services (or aggregator-type services) like FriendFeed. Not unless you previously had some authority and reputation through blogging.

Robert Scoble recently questioned his own use of FriendFeed, and the amount of time he spends with the service. Michael Arrington responded with his own thoughts, essentially saying that Scoble is addicted to FriendFeed and as a result of all his time spent there, his blog has become a ghost town.

Robert himself wrote, “Some people tell me my thought leadership has declined as I’ve blogged less.”

I agree 100%.

Now Robert can afford to experiment, get lost in different services, and even have his brand and reputation tarnished, because of all the success he had previously built up after years of effort. But what about the rest of us?

Blogging is the single most effect way of getting your message out, building reputation, creating authority and demonstrating thought leadership.

Blogging isn’t the best way of staying in touch with people or having conversations; commenting just isn’t as good as more real-time discussions via microblogging. But blogging still dominates when it comes to the dissemination of quality information (and from that quality information comes reputation and authority.) And don’t get me started on the death of blogs. It’s utter nonsense.

A few things to think about:

1. When you discover someone’s blog (via a link, referral, etc.) it’s not uncommon to look through a few posts, or even dig into the archives. The same cannot be said for Twitter. On Twitter you may look at a few tweets, but you can’t really build up enough of a profile of someone from that. So you make a much faster “follow or don’t follow” decision. With a blog, you dig deeper. Most of the time when someone follows me on Twitter, the first thing I do upon viewing their Twitter profile is check out their blog. That’s where the “meat” is…
2. Blogs still generate more meaningful commentary from your audience. Sure, a bunch of people might re-Tweet something, but that’s not the same as having 10 or 20 or 30 or more people comment on a post.
3. Blog posts are eternal whereas Tweets are forgotten. Although most old blog posts really don’t drive a lot of new traffic, they’re still more accessible and meaningful to search engines, and will pick up more traffic than old Tweets. Do you even remember what you posted on Twitter or FriendFeed last week? Probably not. Do you remember what you blogged about? A blog is truly an archive of your life, experiences, thoughts, opinions, etc. Twitter is like someone with no long-term memory.
4. Twitter is now used quite actively to drive people somewhere – to get them to click through to somewhere. Brands do it. Marketers do it. Everyone does it. Blogs are destination sites.
5. As fun as it is to post something pithy and quick on Twitter, blogging is still a better medium for expressing yourself, for weaving in more thought, multiple ideas, other people’s input and commentary. Blogging is strategic. Twitter is strategic too, but less so.

Microblogging services like Twitter are great for expanding your audience. They’re great for maintaining ongoing relationships and jumping “in and out of the stream” of what’s going on. Twitter and FriendFeed are great for keeping up-to-date on things; many people claim they no longer use an RSS reader because they get all the latest news from microblogging services. And that’s very cool. But it doesn’t equate to authority, reputation and thought leadership. Blogging does.

You may be able to increase your authority through microblogging services, but if you’re starting from scratch it won’t be effective. And it’s still best to have your feet firmly planted in the foundation of a blog.

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Most people will tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So if you’re in Montreal, and you’re interested in technology and entrepreneurship, you should think about joining us for breakfast on Tuesday, May 13th @ 9am at Bistro, Etc.

Here are the details:

• Tuesday, May 13th @ 9am
• Location: Bistro, Etc. – 1291 Avenue du Mont-Royal, E.
• Facebook Event Listing: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=13095875628
• Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5502019497

We run the breakfast on the 2nd Tuesday of every month.

Anyone involved in technology + entrepreneurship (developers, startup entrepreneurs, curious people, angel investors, VCs, etc.) are welcome.

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MindValley is a San-Jose based company run by Vishen Lakhiani and Mike Reining. Yesterday, they launched SocialRank, along with 30 niche websites. The websites run the gamut of possible content, from more obvious niches like gadgets (GadgetRoll.com) and celebrity news & gossip (GossipStrip.com) to the more obscure, including MathBloggers.com, ChallengeReligion.com (for atheists), BikingCircle.com, TheLibraryShelf.com (hot stories from librarians?!?!) and KnittingFriends.com.

I’m particularly interested in StartupSignal.com because it’s focused on entrepreneurship and startups. But they’re also launching a number of related sites that tie very well into this blog, including: ProductivityZen.com, MarketingLens.com and MightyBlogger.com.

The folks at MindValley asked me to participate early on with StartupSignal and vote for my favorite startup-related blogs. As a result, I was able to interview Vishen Lakhiani about SocialRank, how it works, what their plans are for taking over the niche blog aggregation world and a bit more. The interview follows.

1. In a nutshell, explain SocialRank? What’s the core need?

Part of the idea came from reading the book “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson.

Anderson writes about how the Internet has a caused a surge in content and choices for anyone seeking information in a niche area.

Looking for articles on Entrepreneurship? Well there are hundreds of blog posts going up daily on the topic.

But this causes a problem…YOU have limited time. Out of the hundreds of new posts on entrepreneurship that went up today, which ones do you pay attention to?

Surely, they can’t all be good? With limited time, you only want to focus on the hottest stories.

Chris Anderson noticed this problem. In the Long Tail he writes that people get overwhelmed by the huge array of choices, and the way to solve this dilemma is to ensure that filters are in place to help people choose well. There should be a way for anyone to instantly see the top 10 entrepreneurship stories in the blogosphere today, without having to waste time shifting through thousands of blogs.

We wondered if we could solve the problem with math. And that’s how SocialRank emerged.

Now if you’re looking for today’s top news on Entrepreneurship – just visit StartupSignal.com and it acts as a filter to make sure that out of the hundreds of new posts on entrepreneurship – only the best ones get to you. It helps you seek out the most relevant and important info – faster than before.

2. You’re launching a lot of niche sites based off of SocialRank. Is it fairly easy to launch the niche sites once you’ve got the technology of SocialRank behind the scenes?

Yes. We have various processes in place to launch a new niche site in a very efficient way. We can spot a niche and have a site rolled out within 24 hrs.

Our goal is to identify the top 1,000 niches on the Net and launch sites to cater to each of these blogger communities. Often we get surprised at the niches we discovered.

Did you know for example that knitting and scrapbooking were among the top 50 hottest niches? We launched a site for knitting called KnittingFriends.com and one for scrapbooking is to follow soon.

3. There are many social media and social bookmarking sites out there; big ones like digg, reddit and propeller that cover broad niches and then smaller ones like DailyHub or Sphinn. All of these are based on voting from the community, but yours is not. Is that the key differentiator?

Absolutely.

Here’s why voting is problematic.

On big sites like Digg – very very few people actually vote. I’ve read some studies that say only 3% of viewers bother to cast a vote.

Now Digg is so big that this 3% is still a large group of people and hot stories do emerge.

But on smaller niche sites like DailyHub, this becomes a problem. Anyone can launch a mini-Digg or Reddit for their niche. But once you go into niches, your audience is simply not large enough to make the votes count. As a result, these sites struggle and never really end up with solid enough data.

It’s a catch 22 situation. Without the audience, you can’t get good data. And without good data, you can’t get an audience. So we pushed our engineers to devise a solution that would not require voting buttons. SocialRank was the result.

SocialRank-powered sites like StartupSignal.com or MarketingLens.com have good data even before the first visitors arrive.

4. You start a niche site by asking a select group of people to name their top 10-20 blogs in that niche. Does this not just result in tracking of the same blogs that everyone in a niche is already following? Will people interested in Marketing, Professional Blogging, Motherhood, Coding, or any of the niche sites you’re launching find something new?

Actually, just the opposite.

From the initial seeding we typically end up with 50 to 100 sites depending on the niche.

But then this grows very rapidly. We’re opening up the system to allow anyone to contribute a site.

5. Along those lines, how do you handle cases of less popular blogs that have killer content? It happens all the time in the blogosphere (for any number of reasons). So if I were to submit such a blog to one of your sites, will it get recognition somehow?

Beautiful Question!

This is exactly what we do. SocialRank studies only the content on your blog and does not take into account any metrics that come from how long you’ve been blogging.

Think of this as a form of “Brand Dampening”. We dampen the influence of brand-name bloggers from skewing the data.

For example, we know that long established blogs tend to score better in terms of Bloglines subscribers, Technorati rank, Google Page Rank etc. If we followed just these criteria, a new upstart blogger with some great content but little history in the field would have a hard time gaining attention.

Let’s say you just started a blog about startup advice. And you just wrote a great post that got tons of backlinks from Digg and Stumbleupon. It’s slowly being picked up across the Web.

Now let’s say in that same day, Guy Kawasaki, the preeminent blogger on startup advice, wrote a post about going on vacation for a week – interesting to his readers perhaps but not anything to do with startups.

If we just looked at the usual criteria (Bloglines subscribers, Technorati rank, Google Page Rank) Guy’s post would score higher than the new blogger with the great article.

But we take this into account with our math and dampen the value of Guy’s brand in unfairly influencing the quality of the content on StartupSignal.com.

The new guy – is now playing on a level playing field.

So we don’t care if you’re The New Guy or Guy Kawasaki. All we care about is your content.

6. Can you tell me the basis for how SocialRank measures the value of a blog and a specific blog post? I know you can’t tell me everything, but what are some of the things you’re looking at.

There are a large number of factors, and we constantly tweak the algorithm to make it better and better. But here are two of the biggest:

1. First, backlinks. How many other bloggers in your field point to your post? This is usually a sign of a good post.
2. Next, comments. We actually “read” your blog and make a note of how many comments you’re getting in a given time period. The comments are a good indicator of quality content.

There’s a lot more to it than that of course. But we have to keep the actual algorithm a secret to avoid spammers gaming the system.

7. Do you think the lack of community-participation — i.e. I can’t vote or comment on Startup Signal or any other niche site — will negatively impact what you’re offering? You’re aggregating the content, but I could just grab the RSS and never come back. Are you looking at more ways to make the sites sticky and community-focused?

Yes we are.

One of the big ways where we have not followed convention is in the use of comments.

One thing that often annoyed many bloggers about Reddit and Digg is that comments end up on their site and not your blog.

We did not want to take comments away from blogs. We encourage users to leave comments on the actual blog and not on our site. Bloggers appreciated this.

But this left us with a gap. How do we get our own original content?

We have something very novel coming up. You’ll hear about it in a few months.

8. How many niche sites are you expecting to launch?

Our goal is 1,000. We really wanted to challenge ourselves.

9. From a business perspective, is the focus on building up traffic, collecting eyeballs and selling advertising? What other business/revenue models are you looking at?

The obvious one is eyeballs. But we have a secondary plan in place. We’ll be unveiling this in perhaps a year.

10. SocialRank is really a product, whereas your company is MindValley. Previously you launched BlinkList, which looks very much like a predecessor to SocialRank. Can you give me a brief history on MindValley, how the company was started, funded, etc.?

It started in my bedroom in New York with a shoestring budget of $500.

We became profitable in our first month and then reinvested profits over and over again.

This year, we launched 4 new web businesses. Our scope is really broad. The businesses range from marketing to technology. We pursue ideas that we think we’re going to have a lot of fun working on and will have quick paths to profitability.

In addition to SocialRank, our other business that launched this month is TheAmericanMonk.com.

Both Mike and I have a strong interest in meditation and wanted to launch a site on this topic. TheAmericanMonk became profitable in its first month too.

Our whole strategy is to turn MindValley into a business-building factory. From 4 web businesses launched a year we want to push ourselves to launch 1 a month. And to have each of these businesses do $1 million in revenue in their first year.

So by 2008, we want to launch a new business every 30 days; each earning $1,000,000 in revenue in its first year.

11. What’s your favorite thing about being an entrepreneur?

I’ve been a broke, struggling entrepreneur and a successful entrepreneur that could fund his own ideas. Trust me the difference is huge.

I hated the entrepreneurial life when I was broke, and I loved it when I made money. But it really depends on where your business is.

The best part about it though, and this is consistent whether you’re struggling or successful – is the amount of growth and learning you gain during your entrepreneurial stint.

I feel like I’m back in school. And I love it!

12. For an entrepreneur just starting out, what would be your top 3 suggestions?

1. First, understand that ideas mean nothing. Anyone can have an idea. The key is execution. How you execute the idea is all that matters. I get dozens of proposals each week. I always ask up-and-coming entrepreneurs to look back at their idea and ask themselves these 4 questions on execution.
   • How to make money off it so you don’t need VCs?
   • How to build a barrier around your customer base so you don’t lose them?
   • How to get cheap/free publicity and marketing?
   • How to drive user adoption?

   Apply these four questions to your idea and you’ll make huge strides towards ensuring success.

2. Teach yourself sales and marketing. I believe this is the single most important early skill for an entrepreneur to have. I failed at a lot of my early business ideas simply because I did not know how to sell or market them.

   I looked down on sales and marketing as baser skills. I was a product designer. Not a “salesman”. But then, while broke, at the height of the dot-com crash in the Valley of 2001, I was forced to take a lowly job as a commission-only salesperson. It was the education of a lifetime. And when I started my new venture a year later, I was able to make it profitable within 1 month. All because of a newfound ability to sell and market.

   Never, ever underestimate the importance of sales and marketing skills.

   I now run a free newsletter offering sales and marketing advice to web entrepreneurs. Your readers can sign up here – www.MindValleyLabs.com.

3. Look for hidden niches. Too many entrepreneurs want to build the next Facebook. They dive into “hot”, well publicized fields like Social Networking. But the reality is – these fields are overcrowded.

   It’s the same with brick and mortar entrepreneurs. Avoid the glamorous opportunities like running your own bar and restaurant because too many people want to do the same.

   Instead – seek out hidden niches.

   I know guys who have made a mint selling granite, or specialty dining tables or informational products online. Who would have though that these were million dollar niches?

   I made a mint selling personal development products online. With that money I was able to go into more glamorous fields like social media. So forget the glamorous niches for now. If you’re just getting started, seek out a “hidden” niche. Be a big fish in a small pond first. And once you’ve gained experience and have enough capital to back yourself up, then try to be a big fish in a big pond.

Conclusion

There’s no question that the volume of blogs and content available is overwhelming. People are tackling this problem from a number of angles, from new RSS readers to data aggregators. Sites like digg and similar clones on niche topics are still gaining in popularity, while established content aggregators like Techmeme continue to thrive.

And we can be sure that social network fatigue and social network overload will get worse before it gets better.

MindValley will face some challenges. People will routinely try and game the system, or people won’t bother if they see it’s not driving traffic to the blogs already being listed. Blogs that cover multiple niches may end up feeding into one of the niche sites with irrelevant content. For example, this blog is being listed on StartupSignal.com, but what happens when I write something not related to entrepreneurship that gets very popular? Will it show up too? Will they filter it? (I suppose I could have asked that question, but the interview was already long! And Vishen can comment here too…)

We’re going to see more and more companies trying to tackle the issues of attention and social network overload, with varying approaches. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Where do you think things are going?

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The biggest downfall of anyone getting involved in social media and social networking is the Social Media Scoreboard.

• The Scoreboard only cares about numbers.
• The Scoreboard is used to rank us against one another.
• The Scoreboard provides no actual value.

The Scoreboard is a master seducer. It whispers temptingly in your ear, “You need more friends. Add more friends. More, more, more.”

What the Scoreboard fails to tell you is that it could care less what you do with those friends, as long as you’re piling them up.

You Can’t Ignore the Scoreboard

Let’s face it, you simply can’t ignore the Scoreboard. Maybe if you have insane willpower or you’re completely anti-social, but once it lights up once or twice with growing numbers, you’re hooked. Ask anyone that has a story hit the front page of digg what it’s like. They’ve got mini-scoreboards in their eyes.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having lots of friends on social media and social networking sites. In fact, I wouldn’t even dissuade you from it. But you have to know what you want out of them and how to get it.

What Do You Want Out Of Social Media?

It’s the most important question you can ask once you delve into the world of social media and social networking. I include blogging in the mix as well under the “social media” umbrella, because many people still question the value of blogging.

If you’re into social networking to keep in touch with friends, that’s great. But recognize the fact that all social networks are professional. For example, prospective employers use social networks to research candidates. And there’s no shortage of business opportunity…

At a high level, here are four things you can get out of social media:

1. Social media is about personal brand. It’s about providing you with a platform to express and demonstrate your domain expertise, interests, values and goals. It provides an extension for describing who you are to the outside world. Everyone should be cognizant of their own personal brand. Social media can catapult your personal brand in ways that nothing else can.

   At the outset, when you first start blogging, or using social networking sites like Facebook, you might not know exactly what kind of personal brand or online persona you want to project. That’s OK. But realize that personal branding is one of the critical factors and value propositions to social media and networking.

2. Social media is about reputation and trust. Reputation and trust are huge components of your personal brand. And the discussion of reputation and trust is increasing substantially, as less-than-savvy marketers infiltrate social networks with endless sales pitches.
3. Social media is about making money. I’m not sure when “making money” became a dirty word, but it shouldn’t be. And there’s a ton of opportunity online to properly leverage social media marketing. On top of that, many people look at how to use social media in a business context, bringing all of the proper practices of running a good business to the areas of social media. For example, Chris Brogan’s thinking about how to measure social media efforts. That convergence – between social media and business – is important, because it helps legitimize social media for business, and create best practices we all benefit from.
4. Social media is about discovering opportunities you didn’t know existed. A huge aspect of social media and social networking is discovery. Putting yourself out there and seeing what happens. And we see plenty of success stories of people involving themselves in social media and finding value they didn’t know was there. Eric at gardenfork found ways of using social media for small town community development. His extensive use of social media tools (including video) has now given him the chance to consult others as well. Becky McCray at Small Biz Survival has earned writing opportunities because of the exposure from blogging. And Tatsuya Nakagawa, CEO of Atomica Creative was surprised at all the speaking engagements thrown his way.

But How Do I Get All Of That Out Of My Friends?

That’s really the big question. The value of social media is proven. But the Social Media Scoreboard has warped our view of how to extract that value. It wants you to add as many friends as you can, for no other reason but to have as many friends as you can. That’s not a useful goal.

An equally important question is, “How do I get the right friends?”

This may sound callous (although it’s not intended that way), but contacts and friends are meant to be leveraged. If you can’t use a friend for something of value to yourself, then they’re just another point on the Scoreboard. Of course, you should expect friends to use you as well, because then you’re proving your worth beyond the Social Media Scoreboard.

The key to finding friends and leveraging them is being observant.

As you delve into social media, blogging and social networking you’ll start wanting to accomplish certain goals. Maybe it’s getting on the home page of digg. Maybe it’s meeting an A-lister that could help your business. Maybe it’s generating a ton of buzz for your new product launch. Regardless of the goal, your powers of observation will help you find the right friends and show you how to use them successfully.

Here are some quick tips:

1. Read people’s profiles. How many of you actually read people’s profiles on sites like MyBlogLog and Facebook? More than likely you hit the “add a friend” button and move on. But people are leaving tons of valuable details about themselves on these sites. The most important being contact details.

   A quick personal anecdote: Many months ago I started delving into digg and how to use it effectively. It was clear that a handful of power diggers submitted a lot of content, much of which hit the front page. If you wanted to be successful on digg, befriending power diggers made sense. But how could you reach them? I then noticed (through the MyBlogLog widget) one of the power diggers visiting my blog a few times. On MyBlogLog, I found his AIM handle in his profile. Voila. A point of contact.

   Keeping my eyes open, following the trail, allowed me to build a very valuable relationship. I think he’d agree.

2. Figure out how people want to be contacted. In an age of social network overload it’s critical that you figure out how people want to be reached. For example, many A-listers in the blogging and social media worlds are completely overloaded by email. But they’ll answer Facebook messages. Or reply to a direct Twitter. It’s not that hard to find out the best way to reach people, and meeting them on their terrain of choice will go a long way to starting the relationship off on the right foot.
3. Find common ground or something you can offer. It’s much easier to reach out to someone when you share something in common. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to scan a person’s blog, About page, or track them via social media to find points of commonality. Use those when reaching out.

   Better yet, provide something of value right off the bat. If you’re paying attention, they’ve probably told you in some way what they might need help with. Get in there and provide that help. Befriend them as more than just another point on their Scoreboard. Be useful.

None of this takes a ton of time. It might only take 10 minutes a day. When you first get rolling in social media, it’ll likely take a lot longer than that, but over time you spend less energy hunting for new relationships and more time nurturing those that already exist. And, as you raise your profile, others will reach out to you. As long as they’re not addicted to the Social Media Scoreboard, you’ll find ways of providing mutual benefit to one another.

The Social Media Scoreboard is a nefarious beast. It’s never satiated. It doesn’t care who you know, or why you know them, just as long as you know a ton of people. Heck, you don’t even have to know people, just “befriend them” and leave it at that. The Social Media Scoreboard thinks “befriending” means “clicking a few buttons and never doing anything else” and that’s just not good enough. So ignore the Social Media Scoreboard (as much as you can!) and you’ll get a ton of value from social media.

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No amount of effort with social media sites and tools like digg, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog, Propeller, etc. can make up for a bad blog. A lack of focus, poor writing, over-advertising and a lousy design will sink your blog each and every time, regardless of how much effort you put into social networking and social media promotion.

The flip side is also true, in that you could have a focused niche, write well, limited advertising and a beautiful design, but still find it hard to build an audience. So you shouldn’t be ignoring the opportunities that social networking and social media provide.

In a recent post I wrote about linkbaiting and guest writing on other blogs, James Chartrand left a comment that got me thinking:

What about when you don’t have the time to surf all the social networking sites? It seems ridiculous. Just after I tell someone we have a LinkedIn page, they ask me if the business has a MySpace page. Then a Yahoo page. Then a Facebook page, a Digg page, and so on.

Not only am I expected to have a page on every social networking or media site or blog possible, I’m expected to surf and browse all these sites, comment, keep in touch and be active.

It goes on. I still have to visit relevant blogs to my subject area and target audience, reading, commenting, etc. Plus there is my own blog, of course, and I do have to work for a living as well…

Stop the madness is a phrase that comes to mind. What’s your solutions to this “be active everywhere at once” problem?

This is an extremely common problem. And it’s getting worse. James didn’t mention Twitter or any of the people search engines like Xing and Spock that have emerged recently.

Can You Keep Up With All the Options?

Honestly, you can’t. Not in a way that allows you to focus effectively on each site and service, assess the value you’re getting and maximize that value.

Two quick suggestions:

1. Be a late adopter. It’s OK if you don’t jump on the bandwagon of every new social media and social networking site. Give it some time, read some intelligent reviews from people you trust (who are early adopters) and then make your move. Being a late adopter allows you gather more information on the value of joining the “latest greatest” service out there.

   A good example is BlogRush. I haven’t added it to my sidebar. For starters, I was skeptical, but even if I was gung-ho I’d probably wait awhile to see how well it’s working for others.

2. Focus, focus, focus. Once you realize you can’t be everywhere all the time, try focusing on a few social networks and social media sites at a time. Build up a reputation in those (which can take considerable time and energy) and then move on from there.

   The alternative is to be everywhere at once but only dip your toe into each place. That’s not a terrible strategy but it can be distracting. If you have taken this approach, you can still decide to focus by putting more energy into just a few of the social networking and media sites, building up your profile in those, and then moving onward.

Even coming in late, after assessing the results others have experienced, and trying to focus, you’re bound to be overwhelmed with options.

The challenge at that point becomes managing and growing your profile and reputation in each social media and social networking site as easily as possible.

The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile

• Twitter: Check Twitter once or twice daily. You’ll miss some stuff, but that’s the nature of Twitter anyway. Scanning tweets is easy, so go through them quickly, and respond to anything appropriate. Robert Scoble does a great job of listing the 10 rules of Twitter. Of course, he breaks them all, but the guidelines are helpful. And Chris Brogan has some ideas on becoming a valued Twitter user that are helpful.
• MyBlogLog: Check your community page once daily. Visit each new community member’s profile page and leave them a thank you message. If your community is growing slowly, you might decide to do this weekly. Each thank you should be as personalized as possible, but you don’t have to go crazy.

  The beauty of MyBlogLog is seeing who continues to visit your site. If you see people in the widget that are there regularly, visit their profiles, consider adding them as contacts and leave thank you messages.

• RSS Reader / Blogs: I try and scan my RSS Reader no more than 3 or 4 times a day. It will depend on how many feeds you’re watching, and how you’ve got them categorized. But you should be able to get a clear picture of what’s important to you very quickly.

  Lately, I haven’t commented as much as I’d like. Commenting on blogs is definitely worthwhile, the challenge is leaving meaningful comments and not spending hours a day doing it.

  Keep cognizant of those blogs that you really enjoy where you haven’t commented in awhile. Take an extra few minutes and re-connect with those blogs via comments. Even if it’s a “great post!” type comment it will help re-establish the relationship with the blog author.

  Bonus Tip: Avoid a growing reading list that becomes unmanageable. If you see something interesting in your RSS Reader, check it out as quickly as possible (even if you’re scanning it) and comment if appropriate. But once you start saving a ton of bookmarks to be read at a later date it’s unlikely you’ll ever find the time.

• Technorati & Linkbacks: Once a day, check Technorati (and other means) for tracking links back to your blog. Visit each of the sites that link to you. If they’re running MyBlogLog, they’ll see that you took the time, and that builds goodwill. A simple “thank you” comment is OK too.
• StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is by far and away the best social media site out there. For this reason I’ve separated it out from the group below. Staying active on StumbleUpon is as easy as voting on stories you like. But in order to really build out your profile you need to spend more time. Lots of people have written about how to get the most out of StumbleUpon.

  But the 10-minute daily approach is even simpler. Track who stumbles stories on your blog, befriend them, and then send them a message through StumbleUpon. The last step, sending a message, is one that I’ve just started, in the hopes that I can make a more personal connection with stumblers interested in my subject matter.

• Social Media & Bookmarking Sites: I have to lump the group of them together, because there are too many to list. These include: digg, Sphinn, Shoutwire, Propeller, reddit and many, many others. Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to focus on more than 2 or 3 at any given time. The 10-minute daily guide to building your profiles on these sites is simple:
  1. Vote daily on a handful of posts.
  2. Submit weekly; at least 1 post, or preferably 5-10.

  You might want to start with less-trafficked, niche sites to start. Sphinn is a great example.

Note: I didn’t include Facebook in the list because it’s impossible to do anything on Facebook in less than 10 minutes. It’s one of the ultimate time-sucks. Having said that, there’s a lot of value in Facebook, which I’ll probably discuss in the future.

The key to succeeding with this 10-minute guide is organization. You need to be organized, practical and focused on moving efficiently. Schedule the times you use the social media, network and bookmarking sites just like you should schedule when you check your email.

The Goals of Building Your Social Media Profile

The goals are simple:

1. Develop meaningful relationships
2. Build targeted traffic

If you choose to spend more time building your social media profile, you’ll likely get better results. But that doesn’t mean you need to or should spend hours per day. And always keep top-of-mind what you’re trying to accomplish, because it’s easy to get carried away and build up your profile for the sake of doing so.

What tips do you have for maintaining and raising your social media profile as efficiently and effectively as possible?

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Most social bookmarking, social media and social networking sites allow you to include a thumbnail image (or avatar) to go with your profile. For example, when you submit a story on digg, your image appears with it.

The best example is MyBlogLog. It grew to huge success, in part because it showed people’s faces. For the first time you could see who was visiting your blog.

Most people take a thumbnail image of their face and use that as their avatar. You can see mine to the right.

But as Cheezhead points out, those images are essentially small banner advertisements for you. He provides an example on his site, where The Employment Guide uses a small logo instead of a face. It’s a great example of trying to differentiate oneself from the crowd.

In the past, MyBlogLog allowed animated avatars, but a few months ago those were removed. They became too distracting and annoying.

But lots of people are getting creative with their avatars. And we’re seeing more people talk about standing out with unique ones.

Tamar Weinberg recently wrote: 11 Tips to Enhance Your Digg User Experience (and Hopefully Bring You Front Page Fame).

Tip #1: Distinguish Yourself by Choosing an Avatar.

So how important are avatars on social media, networking and bookmarking sites?

Apparently important enough that people steal them.

One of digg’s power users is Muhammad Saleem. He’s all over the blogosphere, with his own blog, writing at Pronet Advertising, and guest writing at Copyblogger.

Take a look at Muhammad’s avatar:

Now take a look at DiggChainey’s avatar:

They’re nearly identical.

This makes me laugh and shake my head at the same time. According to Muhammad this has happened to him before, and he changed his avatar to the one he’s using now. I wonder if he’ll be forced to change again…

We all build up our personal brands through the use of social media, networking and bookmarking sites. Those brands are tied to our names, but also to our images. While it’s clear that people are thinking more seriously about their avatars and using them to promote more than just their own face (which can be a good thing), stealing an avatar is in horrible taste. It’s an attempt to leech from someone else’s personal brand. It diminishes the value and openness of the social media community. And it’s a colossal waste of time.

What do you think?

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They’re professional.

There are plenty of social networks designed for personal use, but they all have professional implications and opportunities. And to ignore those issues is a mistake.

Your “Stuff” Is Exposed

Most social networks have some level of privacy to keep prying eyes away from your profile and content, but don’t assume it’s full proof. It’s safer to assume that anything you put on the Internet is public and always will be.

You can’t completely control who sees what you put online. Employers and potential employers can do a quick Google search and find out all kinds of things. The same holds true for a host of other people: law enforcement, creditors, business partners, etc.

But There’s Gold In Them Thar Social Networks

On the positive side, business opportunities abound on social networks, even if they weren’t designed for business. It’s simple. You put people together bound by common interests and get them hooked on participating with one another, and presto, business opportunities emerge.

Since starting on Facebook a month ago I’ve connected with numerous people from a business perspective, which may lead to future opportunities for Standout Jobs. I could have connected with those people via email, but social networks like Facebook (or tools like Twitter) captivate people’s attention; so it’s easier to reach them. When it comes to email, people are overwhelmed and generally hate it. So they’re slower to respond. But send someone a “friend request” on Facebook and they’ll answer almost immediately.

Regardless of whether you’re connecting with people online over your shared love of dogs, photos or cartoon dolls, you’ll build real relationships that can lead beyond the original purpose of the social network.