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Social Media: How to Get Off the Fast Train and Get More Value

April 15, 2008 by Liz Leave a Comment

Worth Saying Again

The Living Web

Comment on my YouTube Vid! Be part of my wiki! Join my Ning! Are you a member of these Facebook Groups?!! Do you Stumble, Digg, Mixx, Reddit, and the others?!! Where’s your account on Flickr?! I haven’t seen you Twitter in hours!!

With all of that to do, how do we do anything else — write a blog post or send an invoice, for an example?

Social Media: How to Scale Back and Get More Value

Quickly enough, we figure out we can either be overwhelmed or make some choices. Am I sounding redundant? Probably a little. (But the horse isn’t dead.) What I said yesterday is worth underscoring with the words of a friend.

In the first of a series for Freelance Switch, m. saleem suggests that we opt out of those we can.

The first thing to keep in mind is that while it may not be impossible for you to dabble in all these different mediums, it is important that you ignore most of them.

I so agree.

Here are some simple tips for how to scale back and get more value from the time you invest. It’s easier to decide if we set up criteria and eliminate what doesn’t meet those standards.

  • What’s your purpose? What’s does the site deliver? Are you looking for community, for friendship, for business or some combination of those? Pick a site that supports your purpose. Do you really need to be on both Pownce and Twitter?
  • Who do you know there? Social networks are popping up all over. Everyone can’t participate everywhere. Some I joined were gone by the time I returned there. Be a slow adopter. Look for where your friends already are.

Then decide which networks you value most and what percent of your time you want to spend on social networking tasks. We don’t try to read every book or see every movie. It’s as fruitless to try to use every social networking site.

One of my favorite sayings goes something like this.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Use the time you gain from scaling back to

  • Interact more at the sites you stay a part of.
  • Be a stronger presence and write stronger content on your own blog.
  • Spend time in other networking pursuits: visiting blogs, meeting clients, and working with people.

It’s okay to get off the social media fast train. Sometimes less really is more.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

Filed Under: Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Productivity, scaling back, social-networking

Pre-Networking – How Well Do You Know Your Social Networking Sites?

April 14, 2008 by Liz 6 Comments

A Model to Organize a Social Networking Life

The Living Web

I’ve been wondering and wandering around social networking for more than a year. The socialscape of the Internet keeps expanding. I keep finding connections to my friends in more places and getting more detail about their activities than I might have imagined. If I don’t figure out soon how to manage the information, I’m sure I’ll soon be buried by bits and bytes.

I’m on a quest to find a model to organize my social networking life. I don’t want a fancy dashboard to track things. I want personal competence and right choices made from experience. Right now, I’m looking at the writing process.

The Writing Process as a Model for Social Networking

When we write, we start a conversation. We put ourselves and our thoughts out there for readers we might or might not know. Public writing is a reaching out to connect with other people. The writing process balances structure and expression so that what we offer is clear, concise, and compelling to the people we’re trying to reach.

Social networking and writing both strive for authentic and successful relationships through communication. It seems that the writing process might serve for carving my way through the overwhelming world of social networks.

The writing process I work with looks like this.

Writing Process via Voyages in English (with permission)

The blue ovals show the steps in the process that focus on expression. The green ovals show the steps that focus on structure. Social networking is not as much about expression and structure as it is about ourselves and our connections. I’m going to modify the model to reflect that using the blue steps for ourselves and the green steps for our connections.

Pre-Networking – How Well Do You Know Your Social Networking Sites?

If you’re like me, you probably belong to many social networks already. For the sake of this exercise, choose only one. We can’t write a book, a poem, a magazine article, and a dissertation at the same time. They each have a different form, format, audience, and message. Choosing only one social network will let us focus on how to get the most from our time.

The first step in the writing process is Prewriting. So I’m calling this Pre-Networking.

  1. Pick a topic: Choose one social networking site.

    Choose a site you know something about and where you already have friends and connections. Facebook, LinkedIn, or StumbleUpon might be good choices because each has a breadth of features. If we do this deeply for one site, that site will be a benchmark for all sites we use.

  2. Research the site. See how it’s structured. Go wide and deep.
    • Notice which friends participate and which seem just to be there.
    • See how and how often people act and interact publicly and privately.
    • Look for how they share information and the kind of information most shared.
    • See how the site handles groups, events, and links to other networks.
    • Read reviews and notice who writes them.

    Record what you learn some way or post about it.

  3. Narrow your focus: Choose one audience / purpose for that site.

    Every social networking site has its strengths. Some are social. Some are about content. Some are strictly business. Decide how the site you’ve chosen best works for you. By choosing your purpose for using that site, you’ll know in an instant which features support you and which sort of communities you want to be part of there.

  4. Note what information you might want to share.
    Over the next few days, read profiles of the people in your chosen communities.

    • Freewrite or outline the ideas about yourself and your work that you want to share.
    • Make a few notes about the kind of connections that you’ll have in this venue. Will you be an open networker? Keep this to friends? Concentrate on business contacts or potential clients? What sort of information will you share and not share?

    Sound like a lot? If you think about it, it’s an investment in saving time. Having a strategy and knowing a site inside out from the start, can save hours of time spent on things that don’t serve us, . . . or even worse, save us the loss of finding out months later that the feature we wished for has been there all along.

    How well do you know the social networking sites that you’re on?

    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Next: Drafting that Profile
    Work with Liz!!
    SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

Filed Under: Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Living-Web, pre-networking as a plan, social-media, social-networking

25 Days to Organize a Blogger’s Life in Time for Holiday Fun

November 19, 2007 by Liz Leave a Comment

Problems, People, Paper, and Plans

insideout logo

I looked at the calendar this morning. Roughly 6 weeks stand between me and the end of the year. I’m not much for New Year’s Resolutions, but I love the feeling of new beginnings when everything is cleaned up, put away, and ready to rock. On the other hand, I don’t like to make work, especially at holiday time. So this morning, I’m putting together a plan that I’m calling . . .

25 Days to Organize My Life in Time for Holiday Fun

At this time of the year, conflicting goals can intrude on the most uncluttered life. They can stress and overwhelm the calmest soul. Chaos like mine is already out of control.

This year, with that in mind, I’m organizing my life to avoid possible nuclear meltdown. I’ll do something each day to wrap things up so that I totally enjoy the end of the year fun.

I plan to clean up my live AND catch up with my friends as we make the season merry and bright.

I. Problems and Solutions

Day 1: Get help with common problems. I’m going to quit trying to figure out everything on my own. It silly for me to invest time digging up basic answers, when Simple Help has probably already figured most of them out. Simplehelp.net is a site that is both interactive and re-active; if you can’t find the solution to your problem, you can request content and the tutorial will be created for you. If I let other folks share what they know, I can save my time for the problems so unique to my situation that only I have the experience and detail to solve them efficiently. I have a couple that need attending to right away.

Day 2: Ask for help with my blog, too. I’m going to let more people know that I welcome guest posts on my blog. Though my blog can’t offer revenue it doesn’t earn, it’s got visibility and an intelligent, cool audience that’s priceless. AjaxNinja suggested seek out guest writers and I’m doing it today . . .

This is an invitation. . . . If you can submit an appropriate post by Friday morning, I sure could use your help. I’ll be in the UK Dec 1-9, 2007, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to blog while I’m gone. You’ll find my email address and topic ideas on the Guest Writer page.

II. Thousands and 150 Important People

Days 3-8: Update one of my “networks” each day from this group of sites:
MyBlogLog,
StumbleUpon,
Digg,
Facebook,
LinkedIn,
and Propeller.
When I find folks who have common interests, add them to my contacts.

Day 9-14: Review other “social networks” I belong to: Xing, Ning, Spock, Zude, Rapleaf, 8apps, Pownce, BlueChip, Zaadz, and Doostang. Decide which I should stay with and which I will resign from.

Day 15-17: Use MyLifeBrand or social url to incorporate the remaining Social Networks into one global platform. Make this a 15-30 minute part of each day moving forward. Place that block during a time that my mind needs a break from other kinds of work.

Day 19-20: Sort and group my email address book. Email is my most natural social network. Delete entries for folks I don’t recognize or haven’t corresponded with in less than 6 months. Email folks on the 6-month drop list that I want to keep current. Check my email settings. Delete old emails I no longer need need.

Day 21-22: Go through the contacts in my phone in much the same way. Delete those I don’t know and calling those I’ve not spoken to but want to keep on as a contact and part of my life.

III. Paper and Plans

Day 23-24: Clean off my desk and clean out my paper files. Maybe I’d better start doing a little bit of this one every day from day 1 . . . hmmmm.

Day 25:Develop an Editorial Calendar for next month using the form below. Allow for spur-of-the-moment ideas and variations.

Editorial Calendar

Then sit back with a nice glass of my favorite beverage and listen to my favorite tunes. . . .

How would your 25 day plan to organize for some fun work out differently?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Filed Under: Inside-Out Thinking, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Inside-Out Thinking, Productivity, social-networking, The Big Idea

The Blog Herald: Social Networking — Am I Person Or an Item?

July 24, 2007 by Liz 4 Comments

Flashback 1997 . . . Flash Forward 2007

For all of our conversation, for the ideas, time, and thoughts share in our comment boxes, I hope that you’ll head over to read this one. Please.

Verbal volleyball can be a kick. When Twitter used the term, people, to mean friends for an Internet second, I got a chance to type, “I’ll have my people call your people and we’ll do lunch.” I’ve always wanted to say that.

Cute, but off the page and forgotten, rightfully so, minutes later.

For the last few days, I’ve been thinking about the realities of going wide and going deep. It’s hard to have the time and the bandwidth to do both. It’s hard to keep up with it all. Every day it happens at a slightly faster speed. The wider I go, the shallower I get.

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

The Blog Herald

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
I wrote at the Blog Herald about books, information, and relationships, making connections from the patterns she sees. I consider these keystone articles.
Authenticity and Transparency in the Real World
In the Real World — The Half-Full, Half-Empty Glass
The Universe of People, Black Holes, and Stars
Connectors and Mavens on the Tipping Point
The Writer’s Dilemma and the Blogger’s Secret
The Two Webs: Information or Relationships?
Social Networking: Am I Person Or an Item?

Filed Under: Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Liz-Strauss, social-networking, The-Blog-Herald

Life, an Onion, and Social Networking

July 23, 2007 by Liz 44 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

about life on the Internet and an onion.

Once a friend gave me a metaphor of the world as an onion.

Life in the comment box is what my friend called Layer 17.

“Imagine that life is like an onion,” a friend said to me. “Most people live on that brown papery stuff on the outside. That ‘s where they go about their daily routine. They’re born. They have kids. They die out in the sunshine on that brown papery thing.”

“Yeah, so.”

“You like to live be thinking and talking inside somewhere down near Layer 17. You come out and have fun on the papery thing, but you live near Layer 17.”

I have fun Social Networking on the papery thing, but the comment box here is Layer 17.

Liz's Signature

Filed Under: Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Ive-been-thinking, life., onion-metaphor, social-networking

Social Networking: How’s It Supposed to Work?

January 25, 2007 by Liz 13 Comments

You Have a Message Waiting From . . .

What was I thinking? When someone I don’t know from my Social Network sends me a message, saying “Hi! What are you doing?” that’s email small talk. Isn’t it?

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

The Blog Herald

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Liz Strauss at The Blog Herald, The Blogging Times, and Who’s One in a Million?

Filed Under: Business Life, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Blog-Herald, Liz-Strauss, management, social-networking

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