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How @YahooNews is changing the game

September 3, 2010

There are plenty of news organizations on twitter however most of them are a study in what not to do. However, one organization has risen above glorified RSS feeds and with a single twitter account changed my opinion of an entire news division.

Here’s how @YahooNews changed the game.

The secret weapon – People

Check out their bio,

The official Twitter account for Yahoo! News, the leading online news site. Tweets are hand-picked by the Y! News Team and 100% RSS feed free!

Hand picked? How quaint in these days of twitter feeds. They know that using human beings is what sets them apart. This strategy takes time, effort, & money but the resulting authenticity and value is priceless.

(More proof is found in the fact that the tweets come from Tweetdeck)

#Hashtags

I’d probably die of shock if the @NYTimes ever actually used hashtag. I mean why would an organization want to increase the visibility of their tweets while contributing to the larger conversation?

Yahoo liberally uses hashtags on everything from #Hurricane news to #MIA airport evacuations.

Lists

Yahoo News creates excellent Twitter lists around news subjects.

Hurricanes – http://twitter.com/YahooNews/hurricanes
Supreme Court – http://twitter.com/YahooNews/scotus
even the Discovery Channel Shooting – http://twitter.com/YahooNews/discovery

It’s nothing short of astounding that a news organization is helping me listen to others. These lists sometimes even include rival news sites but Yahoo seems to actually care about creating curated and useful lists.

I’m a heavy user of Twitter lists and this was the tipping point where I became a real fan of @YahooNews.

Replies

Yes there are a few national organizations that use hashtags and a couple even create a lists but how many organizations will actually reply?

Egads! Is that actually humor?

YahooNews just get’s it.

The list of what Yahoo is doing right just keeps going. Everything from excellent syntax to new style retweets, and even attribution are all the result of actual people understanding how to use twitter. In doing so they’ve created one of the most useful and authentic news sources on Twitter.

Bravo @YahooNews

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Social Bookmarking – The land time forgot

August 28, 2010

In an online world filled with likes & retweets the lowly bookmark is in a state of severe neglect. The social world is developing a myriad of ways to share content and judge what’s popular while disregarding the value in organizing & discovering useful content.

To illustrate my point: You know that really cool how-to article you tweeted 3 weeks ago? Can you find it again?

There is a good chance that the answer is no. What we we have gained in real-time information we have lost in short term memory.

Bookmarking is still the only way to create a reference library of online content. The web browser bookmark (or favorite) was introduced in the early 90s in the Mosaic browser and this decade we saw the bookmark transformed with social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking holds plenty of potential that is largely ignored.

A none too Delicious rant

Delicious was the forerunner of this social bookmarking remains the most popular service. Unfortunately, it’s awful.

The site was founded in 2003 and then purchased by Yahoo! in 2005. At the time I thought this would be a boom to social bookmarking with Yahoo’s money and eyeballs. (This was the before we knew that Yahoo was the place startups go to die.) Instead Delicious entered a cryogenic state that would make Ted Williams jealous.

Even if we ignore that the website looks like it was designed by Craigslist and it is about as user friendly as a porcupine you can’t deny that it hasn’t offered a single innovation in 5 years. The feature list remains the same; Save, tag, search. That’s it.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the social bookmarking service Diigo. My reasons are obvious, take a look at a few of their features

highlighting of text and images
add sticky notes to a page
screen captures of the site
share annotated pages
create lists, and even create user groups around a subject.

Diigo’s toolset allows me to create an amazing digital memory but can social bookmarking do more?

Discovering the Useful Web

Which action constitutes a stronger level of interest? A share or a save?

I think the case can be made bookmarking a site indicates it has greater value than if I simply tweet or like a page.

What it these worlds finally collided? What if both my bookmarks and my shared sites contributed to a profile of what I find interesting. This is the untapped gold mine in social bookmarking.

Content discovery is the next big phase of the social web because we need systems that highlight the most interesting content out of the deluge of streaming information.

Look at the tools racing in this direction.

Google Reader Shared Items – This is probably the most powerful feature of G.R. I can see what my friends found interesting and it creates a shorthand best of the web reading list.
Topsy/Bit.ly/Tweetmeme – All services focused on tracking what is shared so they can provide data on what is popular.
Digg – A “social news” site that relies on other diggs to help find what is popular
My6sense – An amazing iPhone app that learns what I like and uses my social streams to deliver me the most interesting content.

As we begin to use content discovery tools to gauge the value of content I want to see the number of shares but also the number of bookmarks. Analyzing the number of bookmarks opens a whole new realm of possibilities. It can move the social web beyond “what is popular” to “what is useful”.

For example, take your standard Mashable news blurb, it has 600 retweets but it might not be that useful. If my recommendation system could also see that it’s only been bookmarked 20 times then it could better judge if I will actually find it useful.

To be fair Delicious does have a popular links section but does this look useful to you?

Honestly, I could care less what is poplar. Heck @LadyGaga is the most popular Twitter female on the planet but I’m not interested. Give me useful any day.

Bookmarks are touchstones. They are something we want to remember. The very action means they are useful and its time Social Bookmarking realized they are the missing link in this change.

The challenge –

We need more people using social bookmarking.
We need social bookmarking services to evolve into recommendation/discovery systems.

Are you using Delicious or Diigo? If not I’d love to know why. What roadblocks keep you from organizing your links?

Are you looking for a more useful web?

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Chris Brogan’s insights into Social Media Marketing

August 15, 2010

@ChrisBrogan (ChrisBrogan.com) joined @MackCollier (MackCollier.com) for #BlogChat this evening to share tips for marketing and promoting your blog through social media and while it was focused toward blogging I think the tips universally apply to most any social media strategy.

The tweetstream was a bit crazy but as always Chris shared some well reasoned and practical advice. Here’s the best of what he said.

Question 1: How can we decide which social sites will help our blog? What’s the strategy?

It depends on what you want from your blogging. Is it business or just attention? If it’s business then targeting helps.
One tool to use to find where your customers are active is Flowtown.com. Stick in your prospects/customers email addresses and figure out where most folks spend their time. If you need to develop a list try starting with something like Alltop.com, find relevant topics and start commenting.
One thing NOT to do is only use LinkedIn for business or Facebook only for fun.
Once you find WHERE your marketplace is spend some time understanding how that environment acts. For instance Digg doesn’t like self-promotion, other sites don’t mind.
If you are blogging for business its about knowing where you buyers hang out.
Lastly, NEVER shove your updates all over the social networks. Make each environment its own beast. Be selective

Takeaway- Find where your people are active, learn the community expectations, and mix it up. A personal topic may be a conversation hook that leads to a new client or reader and you might find discover shared interests with existing business relationships.

Question 2: As far as being active on other sites any tips for how many we need?

It’s not a number of networks we need it’s about finding how many is too many. 3-4 networks is usually a lot to manage.
Remember the goal of using networks to enhance your blog is to thread your ideas into other like minded streams.
The number 1 social network you’re neglecting: email marketing. 93% opt into a daily brand relationship via email.

Chris also reiterated a phrase I learned from him and preach often,

You live and die by your database. – @JeffPulver

Takeaway- Don’t overwhelm yourself with numerous networks. Cultivate don’t neglect. Prune if needed. Never forget about the reach of email and the importance of building a database of contacts & readers.

Question 3: You talk about outposts, What does that mean?

Outposts are off-main-site places like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, & Forums
I recommend spending 50% of your social time on outposts, making relationships, prospecting, and building connections.
Promote others 12:1 over yourself
Outposts are about meeting people on neutral ground, where THEY are.
Do good things elsewhere. Promote great causes on Facebook. Do TONS of not-promoting-you with no hope of reciprocity.

Ask yourself this: what’s the Goal of your blog?” Don’t lie Sales? Thought leadership? A channel? Media property?

Takeaway- It’s just like learning to “work” a room, If you want someone to be interested in you then show genuine interest in them. Doing good things is invaluable. A personal example, I would have never followed @TysonFoods then I found out how they use social media to promote their work with food banks and feeding the hungry. Instantly I’m moved from apathy to being a fan.

It was a great discussion and I appreciate @MackCollier for hosting the chat and of course @ChrisBrogan for sharing his thoughts. If you want to read the full stream see the #Blogchat transcript. Blogchat is held every Sunday night from 8-9CST.

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New, Notable, & Nifty from the week that was Aug 14

August 14, 2010

Here’s what I found interesting from the past week. Hootsuite launched Premium Accounts – I think the plans are reasonable and I’m glad to see such a good service actually show interest in making money. We’ll see how the community responds and this will hopefully open doors for other competitors. (We have Hootsuite joining us [...]

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