Planing Your Personal Social Media Publishing

Lately, I have been talking to quite a few folks about how to setup your own personal publishing system.  There is no shortage of platforms for an individual to publish content on the web.  There is also no shortage of tools which can distribute your posts to other sites.  Without planning, the whole system becomes and echo chamber and your message gets bounced from one service to another.  Some services will get the same post multiple times, which leaves the message that you either don't know how to manage you publishing or don't care about wasting each constituent's time.   

The answer is to do a quick inventory of the sites you wish to use to post on, and map out the distribution strategy. 

Here is what I came up with:

Facebook - Primary for personal interaction,  I try to only use Facebook for connecting with people that I know.  I keep the flow of business/technical items to a minimum.   Links in Facebook feed to Friendfeed. 

Twitter - Quick thoughts and links to interesting sites, feeds to Facebook and FriendFeed. 

Delicious , Digg, StumbleUpon - Quick bookmarks feeds to friendfeed

Posterous - Main blogging platform, where I post more in depth content feeds friendfeed. 

I have accounts a most social tool sites, I don't use them often, but it does help reinforce my personal brand, and all link to my personal site ProjectMechanics.com 

Why Do People Use Online Social Networks

Planing Your Personal Social Media Publishing

Comment

 

 

Channel Website Obituary. R.I.P.

As social media continues to play havoc with the traditional IT sales process, resellers are discovering a hard truth. Their web sites, developed a decade ago with so much vendor enthusiasm, are now about as relevant as their fax machines in terms of meeting the needs of their customers. Today, most partner websites hurt the sales effort more than help it.

It’s time to schedule the funeral, invite the mourners, and send the flowers.

In the modern world, customers increasingly on-line, getting product information, educating themselves about vendors, and comparing prices before reseller sales people even know that an opportunity exists. Some end users even expect to purchase their products/services on-line without dealing with a salesperson at all! In other words, many consumers have moved beyond Web 1.0 into a social media world that makes most reseller sites irrelevant, annoying, and even deadly.

To keep their customers, resellers need to make a leap into the future.

Channel 1.0 websites are static and one-dimensional. They use “frames” to display documents and files that could (originally) be downloaded over dial-up lines. Visitors (customers) were expected to get the information and then leave the site. These kinds of websites are difficult to update quickly (where is the web guy when you need them?) and therefore unusually out of date when customers visit, so visitors move on quickly. Unfortunately, today there are more than 100 million of these Web 1.0 websites today, many of them used by channel partners.

Channel 2.0 websites allow visitors to do more than retrieve information, they are multidimensional, interactive, and interconnected. Their goal is to engage customers (stickiness) in a conversation: to give AND receive information through blogs, wikis, forums, RSS feeds, Twitter, videos, social networking and more. Many web 2.0 sites are evolving into full-blown end-user communities, which provide a number of benefits to vendors, resellers, and customers.

Channel 3.0 websites include vendor syndication of content. Already, some progressive vendors are providing syndicated web pages whereby they can load their product, service, or pricing information directly onto the websites or into the communities of their channel partners. When a new product is released, it only takes a few minutes for a marketing manager to load the new content into a “master page” that is automatically (and consistently) displayed on the designated pages of partner sites or communities – with every location being updated simultaneously.

Customers increasingly expect the social media experience that they have at home and that their IT vendors are starting to provide. They gravitate towards the communities maintained by IT vendors because these interactive sites meet their needs far better than the static Web 1.0 websites that partners are still maintaining. The result could be total marketing disintermediation, where resellers are increasingly absent from on-line sales, marketing, and support conversations. Predictably, the largest vendors (Cisco, IBM, VMWare, Microsoft, et al.) are already building strong connections with their customers through aggressive social media programs.

Reworking reseller websites is a channel marketing imperative. Audits of reseller on-line presence, followed by technical resources and training, backed by generous MDF reimbursement is today’s most important program. Smart resellers are already crying out for help from their vendors. (Is anyone listening?)

……………………………..

Michael Dubrall is the Managing Director of Gilwell Group, a research and consulting company that specializes in describing “Channels of the Future.” He is a regular contributor to the Integrated mar.com Partner Manager Community, Channel Champions, and other industry blogs on the subject of next generation partnerships.

Link to original post

Why Do People Use Online Social Networks

Channel Website Obituary. R.I.P.

Comment

 

 

10 Absolutes of Social Media Strategy

Sometimes it good to step back and look at the bigger picture. Social Media can seem so tactical that its easy to forget how powerful a well-executed strategy can be.

Ground youself with these guidelines, take a deep breath, and then get back to your posting.

10 Absolutes of Social Media Strategy

Link to original post

Social Media Information Center
Social Media Blog

Create an Account on the Social Media Information Center

Social Media Information Center offers publishing memberships.

We do charge a small fee to publish on the Social Media Information Center.

Note non-sponsored presentations we create or embed as a service to our members and visitors are marked
Top Choice featured for free by

Sponsored presentations are marked
Top Choice sponsored by Member of

Social Media Information Center affiliations are marked
Top Choice Affiliate of

Why is there a membership fee to publish on the Social Media Information Center?

Social Media Information Center provides a premium, unique publishing service and charges for it. We believe in a direct and honest relationship with our members and visitors. Because we charge for our publishing service and have a paid membership business model, we don't need to make decisions later on that might compromise our integrity in order to make money.

Registration Recommendations:

* Have something good you are passionate about
* Have a business website and blog
* Participate in social networks and around the web

Learn more about Social Media Information Center Top Choice Publishing Memberships.

Get Connections To Your Web Content

Social Media Information Center puts links to your web content and web places.

If you’ve created a good website and have a good business; you can quickly and easily connect your content and your part of the web here on the Social Media Information Center and make it easier for people to discover you, your information, your business, your product, your service, and your website.

You can create an account on the Social Media Information Center and after you are approved log in to your account and post some of your content as often as you like.