Month: August 2012

Surfing for content

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Surfing Along Malibu Beach, California. 10/1972

Picture supplied by the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

How do you surf content when there is so much of it going around? With social bookmarking websites like Digg, and Redit losing ground, where are we ‘the consumer’ looking for information?

 

Are we looking to flasher, more socially adapt aggregator apps like Flipboard, Hootsuite, Timeline and Twitter for content of interest.
Brian Solis, a fellow social media expert is famously known for the following statement, ‘News no longer breaks, it tweets,’ and this is true. However; what if I’m not looking for the latest news story; but the top trending outfits, or some true life story like the kind of articles you get in a woman’s glossy magazine (i.e. Marie Claire, Company and so forth).

 

And how do we make our decisions about where to shop online when there are thousands of online shops to choose from? Do we take them largely from the recommendations of friends and family – like Facebook tell us, or do we venture out and find new shops to shop in, new books to read, and new photographs to like?

 

I’d love to hear how you go about finding the content that interests you?

 

  For example, I am a huge Marie Claire fan, but I very rarely buy their magazine for multiple reasons, at the moment. Still, I enjoy reading their articles and in a moment I decided to look for something interesting, I found myself overwhelmed by choice.

 

  Looking to my iPhone and flicking through my apps, it seemed Flipboard was the obvious choice. It’s neat display, magazine style app is easy to share and combine with several of my key social networks allowing me to stay in touch with various magazines, blogs and networks at any one time – This is great, but it is only one app. Have you found others?

 

  How do you locate interesting content? Do you have to do anything at all, or do you find it’s all laid out in front of you via Timeline, and other newsfeeds?

 

  Leave your thoughts below, or on @leemac85

Start lean, and keep them keen.

2 Comments

This should be the statement and attitude of all start-up business. Borrowing money, paying for leads, paying to sit and have a coffee with someone may work and be beneficial for some; however, to me this makes no sense at all.

Surely we ‘business owners’ want to be adding value and not subtracting it; and the best way to do this, is to add quality not quantity?

What do you think?

 

An idea to improve your social influence

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Simply posting on timeline what you had for dinner, or items of clothing that you wish to buy are all great if you wish to do so, on your own personal profile. However, the same principles that you use when posting on your personal profile do not apply when posting from a Facebook page; or through any other  business-related social media channel for that matter.

We must learn to engage and move away from the spectating side of social media – Myself included. I don’t claim to be anything more than a work in progress, but I do have a fair idea about how things should be done and aim to hit those standards continuously.

Some ideas on how we could all improve our social influence online;

1. Start using our networks to connect and engage. We use those words way more in speech than in action.

2. We are all human and despite, the fact that we are interacting via a computer screen of sort; we need to be willing, open and honest as a business to say, ‘I suck at this, but I can help with this.’ People want to know there is a real human behind the profile and no matter how great you are at your job, we will all make mistakes, so have a little grace.

3. Not every negative comment needs to be a crisis, some can even be constructive. At least then we can learn, change and help someone else avoid making the same mistakes.

Let us inject some of the resilience that we require in every day relationships into our teams.

A man who has skill and experience is skillful, but a man of great intelligence is worth far more.

Don’t forget if your reading this and you have a question, or what to find out more. You can chat to me @leemac85 on Twitter too.

Hope v Faith

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Two interesting words, with to very different meanings.

To hope is to be hopeful – To be hopeful that from a particular situation, event or relationship we or the thing that is hoped for will produce a desired result.

To have faith is to believe without having a full understanding or tangible sense that something is, or will be.

How do they relate to business, marketing or leadership?

Well… they’re also attitudes, and in this post I would like to refer to them as seeds. Whatever attitude we choose to take into a particular campaign, business or idea will inevitably produce fruit from the seeds of the attitude we plant.

You can’t plant an apple tree and expect to get oranges, so it’s important to take a moment to revaluate which of the two attitudes you take with you on your journey.

Sometimes we hold on for something that can be seen, but the truth is neither hoping, wishing or having faith enables us to fully see what lies ahead in any aspect of life. They are merely the rope swings in which to get us across a deep pool of unknown. Be careful, which rope you choose because only one of the three I’ve just mentioned will get you to the other side.

Have you figured it out yet?