Top Ten Stumble Upon Videos

Since discovering Stumble Upon only a few weeks ago I have to admit I’m already addicted. After being asked the same question by my boyfriend and father on the same day, which went something like…“What do you do and where do you go when you sit down at the Internet and want to discover something fun.” To this I replied, “Join Stumble Upon.”

I had no idea what this little piece of advice would do – not only have I been inundated with links sent to me via MSN and Skype, I have also been informed that my boyfriend was up until sun rise (he’s back in the UK whilst I’m in the USA) discovering websites, playing games and watching videos.

However I cannot blame him as I too have managed to waste away many an hour ‘stumbling’ since finding the site. So here's my ten favourite videos found through stumble (chosen on content rather than quality). Enjoy…

• Group of 100 Japanese - prank / social psychology
• ESC - Animation vs Animator in 3D
• Coolest Bird Ever
• Amazing baseball catch by girl
• Boooo!
• The Genius of George W. Bush
• This Technology will blow your mind
• The best prank ever
• True love between lion and men
• DJ Tiesto - Adagio for Strings

Networking - how to manage your time

I could spend all day telling you the upsides of social media, soon enough that will be my job (when I return from my travel excursion, in other words my road trip around the states in a bid to claim my last two months of freedom before I become a 9-5iver.) And if I can’t I run the risk of living out of a cardboard box.

However my qualm comes when family members say to me “How do people have the time to do all this?” or “I’m too bl***y busy for all that malarkey!” At first I found it difficult to answer this question with a straight and simple answer. Clearly people like myself who aren’t working a 9-5 job have the spare time, as do people who are making a career out of social media, but for others it appears that it’s not that easy.

This is when I discovered Steve Rubel's essay "Get Productive with Social Media (and Stay Sane)". Having commented or rather disagreed with some of Steve's thoughts in a previous blog posts, I have to commend Steve on this brilliant advice.

Steve quotes three simple steps...

Step 1. Set a North Star

The first step is to ask yourself a really hard question: Where does social media fit in my life? What need does it truly serve? For many it meets a combination of business, personal and/or spiritual needs. However, for some, it's just a way to kill time. So keep it real and be honest. No answer is wrong.

In my case, social media is integrated into my work. At Edelman Digital I track technology and social trends and advise our team and blue-chips on how these will impact marketing. In addition, I share insights that support our agency's thought leadership efforts by participating in different venues.

Now that I know what I want to get out of the social sphere, I can make sure I devote the right amount of time in a focused way. Set a North Star that keeps you moving toward a destination and view the social web as an essential part of the journey.

Step 2. Apply the Pareto Principle

For me, social media follows the Pareto Principle: 80% of the value comes from 20% of the content. Weed out the noise, home in on the signal and have systems that archive information so it's easy to find later. Tools will hopefully evolve to make this more seamless in the future. However, for now you're on your own.

One way I zero in on high value information is to use FriendFeed. This might seem contradictory given it can be a fire hose. Still, if you use its powerful imaginary friend, hiding and search features and follow only a small number of people who use their streams to provide information that move you closer to your North Star, it can be very effective. I am looking at integrating this with AideRSS.

Another system I have takes full advantage of Google Reader's search and tagging capabilities. I subscribe to hundreds of feeds. Many of these are archived just for search. Others, like the ones in my "Faves" folder, I make sure I read daily to stay ahead.

Step 3: Schedule Time to be Social

There's a time to keep your head down and focused and there's a time for being social. Keep these separate and sacred and aligned with your priorities and peak productivity times.

One way I focus my time is to avoid running desktop applications like Twhirl or a desktop RSS reader that constantly pulls down new content. They're terrific apps, but they're not for me.

In addition, I have two calendars set up in Google Calendar: one for budgeting my time and another that I use to log it to ensure I stay on track. Using these two in tandem, I know how much time each week I can to devote to social media and just when I will do so. In addition, I can easily see if I fell off the wagon. There are also a number of services that can automate this for you. I use Firefox's powerful Smart Bookmarks feature.

Thanks for laying it down so simply Steve and now when asked this question again I can give people/critics these three simple pointers and hopefully everyone can make a little time to connect using social media.

50 Ways You, I and Everyone Else Can Use Social Media (from Chris Brogan)

I found Chris Brogan's '50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing" post very useful this morning and i continue on my quest into the realm of social media. I picked up on it through Chris' 'tweets' and as someone new to the business I thought it proved to be a useful guide to all marketers, but particularly 'newbees' like myself.
I wanted to recite it here, not only to pass this information on but more so I remember to utilise these methods. So here goes...

50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.

I thought this was a brilliant list of strategic initiatives - so what's next Chris? Could 50 things on not what to do be on the cards?

Comments are always welcome here

As my first post on this blog I thought it would be appropriate to tap into Chris Brogan's thoughts on commenting. I have to agree whole heartedly with Chris that commenting is something bloggers should strive to participate in.

As a fairly new blogger I will be looking to readers' comments to check I'm heading in the right direction whether this be in my style, content or links. This is where I must agree with Ulla - patting on the back is not such a bad thing either. Yes more detailed comments are a lot more useful, however as discussed in most of the comments on Chris' page, time restrictions play a big role when considering why the percentage of commenting is so low.

I also think Stephen Hopson's point about 'shyness' being a factor is very valid as it was not so long ago that I decided to take the plunge and spread my thoughts by way of commenting.

So to everyone and anyone this reaches please feel free to comment on my posts, after all the blogoshpere is a place for conversation and debate.

And if anyone has any tips on how I can increase the readership of my blog once I am fully up and running (although I plan to post everyday for the next week or so) I would be very grateful for your thoughts...