How "social" is social media?

The question occurred to me while I was on vacation. I hadn't brought a laptop, after all it was my vacation. I looked up from my reading to see the three other people I was with all typing on laptops and could only wonder 'Is that how I look?' Are we being anti-social when participating in social media online?

I guess when I am at the office and the only one there any way, I'm being more social when fraternizing online, but when there is more than one person in the room one must remember to not only be social online, but to remember the social niceties of society. This is not always easy, especially in this electronically tethered world.

We must keep in mind the people around us as well as our online family. I know from personal experience that it is all too easy to get caught up in something like twitter, facebook, or even email and suddenly realize that you've been at it for a few hours without relief. Sometimes I'll see someone in my family sit down to "just check email", or "just check my wall" and I know that extricating them will be a herculean task.

So, remember to take the actual people around you into account.

Social Media - What to say (4 in a series of 5)

To recap: in the first in this series we addressed how to listen. We then went on to talk about getting involved in the second part. In the third part I spoke about the need to give up control. These posts are meant to be read in sequence.

In the fourth part of the series I'll address what you say. It is fairly easy, no matter what platform you are using (twitter, facebook, myspace, ning, blog, etc) be completely honest.

The reason is that in the end the truth will out. If you have not been honest it will come back to haunt you. Remember that unlike the vegas axiom that "what happens in vegas stays in vegas" what happens in social media networks will haunt you forever. A twitter example may be appropriate here. You may spend a significant amount of time and energy building your brand on twitter and acquiring the right kind of followers. One wrong tweet may sully your reputation for quite a long time and lose many of those followers.

Also don't try to sell something to a new follower, get to know them first. You'll get a feel for who would be open to a link to your site and who won't. In the second part in this series I talked about giving more than you get. This means yes you can post a link to your blog or website, but make sure you share 3x more information that isn't about you.

For instance, deciding to set up an auto DM (direct message) for new followers with a plug for your product in it. This is a definite no-no. Although a DM is only seen by you and the person you sent it to, there is a very good chance that the receiver will unfollow you.

Series of 5: Parts 1, 2, 3, 5

Social Media - Getting involved (2 in series of 5)

In an earlier post, I suggested that the first and most important rule of Social media was to Listen. But it does not become Social until you interact. So the second rule of Social media is to interact with those you have been listening to and learning from. Or simply, engage.

This is not as easy as it may sound. But it is extremely important to remember that all social media is about building communities. Remember that your audience is interested in being involved in the conversation. If you shut them out by expounding too much and you may no longer have an audience.

During the listening portion of your indoctrination into social media you learned how people interact. One of the most quoted axioms is the rule of three or for every one tweet or blog about your interests there should be 3 more tweets/blogs/posts about what most interests your intended audience. In other words, give a lot more than you get.

Social Media is about conversations and building relationships. It takes effort. Don’t just talk about yourself. Ask questions, engage people and link, Most of all be inspiring.

Series of 5: Parts 1, 3, 4, 5

Code snippets for bloggers

I've been playing around with blogger and trying various different things on this blog. I've added a couple of widgets and pasted some javascript in to see what happens. While looking around, and of course listening to twitter, I came upon a mention of tweetmeme and there a mention of inserting the tweetmeme button onto your blog.

I was of course interested to see if I could do it on blogger. After a little hunting around I found a blog that explains how to do this among other things. The blog is here. The page with the blogger info is here, and the specific post with the tweetmeme info in it is here.

That is how I added the tweet/retweet button on the bottom of each post. Now if I can only get it to be at the top of the post ...