If you’re relying on Twitter as your social media hub, you’re limiting your potential for impact and influence. Twitter is excellent for distribution, but if you’re going to communicate original ideas, you’ll need a blog (or something similar). The most influential people on Twitter are either already celebrities, create their own content, or both. Who do you see most often retweeted? Major news outlets like CNN, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Mashable. Guy Kawasaki. Robert Scoble. Of course there are many reasons these people are influential, but a very basic reason is that they are creating original content somewhere other than Twitter. They are most often using Twitter as a super-news-feed, and as a way to drive people back to their blog, web site, etc. (Scoble is an exception. He converses everywhere.) Here are a handful of the many reasons a blog gives you more control and more power: - With a blog, you control the agenda, whether you’re communicating on behalf of a company, or for personal reasons.
- Your blog can cater to a sub-group of your Twitter friends or a different audience altogether.
- A blog is less dominated by spam than Twitter.
- You can ...
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Kenyan bloggers and website owners are now pleased to note that they can receive their Google Adsense earnings in Kenyan Shillings. This was not the case previously and many website owners had dificulty banking the foreign currency(Dollar or Euros) cheques with their local banks, Further ,payment would be delayed for upto 21 working days from the date of receipt with Banks charging commisions on the cheques.
So are you a web publisher, sign up to Google Adsense and customize your earnings to Kenyan Shillings or any other local currency that would be most appropriate to your situation.Yes it is very much possible to earn money online if you have good content and commitment(the two C's) .
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I asked a question of the Social Media: Engage panel at Internet Summit ‘09 about 30 minutes ago and since that moment I’ve been thinking about online anonymity. People seem to hate it. When I blogged about the upside and relevance of anonymous comments as they relate to news stories, some people balked. Jason Falls said at Social Media Business Forum last month that he wishes newspaper sites would stop allowing anonymous comments altogether. I get that. I know the drama that ensues when people hide behind the cloak of anonymity. Heck, I live it as part of my job and I don’t always like it. But I still maintain that there is a place for it. You shouldn’t always have to be who you are just to communicate across the web, whether you’re on a social site or otherwise.And not everyone has awful intentions. So, I am going to take this to the extreme. If anonymity is no longer needed in society, let’s just get rid of the Witness Protection Program. Let the people who snitch on the mafia boss and turn in the mass murderer come forward publicly and deal with the consequences that may come their way because they decided to speak up. It’s all about transparency and openness right? ... read more >>
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I think it is. And I tweeted so yesterday. And the reason is obvious. What is SEO about? Ultimately, it is about one thing: the ‘website’. It’s about making a website and its pages discoverable, ranked favorably in search results, described appropriately so that searchers hook on the description etc. But ‘websites’ are not ‘in’. Check the diagrams below from Google trends for websites for the past 12 months.  Website traffic for 5 major IT companies  Website traffic for the 2 major consumer goods companies While the overall number of people online is increasing, the visits to the web sites keep falling. At the same time the volume of searches for these brands shows a completely different picture.  Search volume for the 2 major consumer goods companies  Search volume for 5 big IT companies In the last 12 months CG companies see a volume increase or remain steady (amidst the crisis) while for IT, a longer perspective reveals a mixed picture that has to do with what these companies are and technologies they offer: - oracle and ibm are gradually decreasing,
- apple is increasing,
- dell the same although less quickly,
- and hp seems to hold its ...
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What should the relationship between PR and Marketing departments look like in a time when the very lines between the two disciplines are increasingly blurry? Who among PR firms, agencies, and marketing departments is best equipped to guide influencers, direct word of mouth, and represent a brand with social media in the mix? Are there different strategies, and is content more important, in B2B as opposed to B2C marketing? In an attempt to answer these questions and more, and to provide a guide for navigating the changes occurring in PR and Marketing, Social Media Today partnered with the Social Media Group once again to present an interactive webcast on the subject. A recording of yesterday's discussion is now available below: Listen now: read more >>
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I watched Garfield's Halloween special over the weekend and since then I've had the phrase "Candy, candy, candy..." running through my mind.
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Forrester’s Alex Cullen recently released, The Top 15 Technology Trends EA Should Watch and they were nice to share with me. The summary states, “Forrester has identified 15 technologies with the greatest potential for business impact, and we’ve grouped these technologies into five themes: social computing for enterprises, process-centric information, restructured IT service platforms, Agile applications, and mobile as the new desktop. I am most interested in social computing for enterprises. Alex wrote that social computing — from member-driven communities to user-generated content — is becoming ubiquitous in our personal lives and business versions of these will become prevalent. I agree and think they already are but I may be talking to too many vendors. The key technology trends enabling this spread of social computing start with the fact that collaborative platforms are becoming social, or people centric is Alex’s words. I see constantly new vendors in this enterprise 2.0 space such as CubeTree, ManyMoon, and Yakabod. At the same time established vendors, large and small, are adding more social features to their tool sets such as Sharepoint, Traction, and Socialtext. ... read more >>
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I was going through some IDC survey data that I got back recently and I think there's an interesting story to tell. My group does a regular survey 2-4 times a year on software applications, called Appstats. We have some fixed questions for trending and some questions that change out each time so that we can look at many different parts of the applications markets. this last survey I included some social software questions. One in particular is interesting: Which of the following Enterprise 2.0 technologies do you currently use now or plan to implement in the next 12 months? Here are the results from 503 senior business and IT personnel across businesses from mid-market to enterprise: 
Some things of course are no surprise, like collaboration platforms are the most prevalent in current use (they have been around the longest after all). I was a little surprised that the use of web 2.0 tools like facebook and Twitter for customer service surveyed at 46.3% using or plan to use in the next 12 months. I suppose the current "over" hyping of success stories in the application of these tools to customer interactions has caused a bit of a bubble. As I look at each individual app I do .. ... read more >>
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 According to a new whitepaper by Mr. Youth, Millennial Moms (women born between 1977 and 1996) are supplanting college students as the most connected and technology-dependent population.
In the report, Mr. Youth shares the four attributes that make Millennial Moms digital trendsetters: Be sure to follow Mr. Youth on Twitter and Facebook to stay current on the latest Millennial Mom & youth marketing trends.  Link to original post ... read more >>
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User generated content is, for many media companies and other organisations, more of a problem than a solution. Vague calls to action lead to waves of irrelevant content submitted by audiences who have taken time, effort, and in some instances spent money to do so - only for that content to, in most instances, be ignored. Online communities require moderation to keep discussions on the right side of the law. Breaking stories of importance, or topics that capture the imagination, lead to floods of content that quickly overwhelm processes and technical platforms. In all these situations, which will be familiar to anyone who has ever worked at the social media collision point between audiences and organisations, very little of value is extracted from what can be a costly exercise, primarily because most "social platforms" have been built to pull in audiences and allow moderators to police user activity. Whilst there is still a place for such propositions, particularly where calls to action can be closely aligned to the editorial or other content that is of value to the owners of that proposition, in many instances it makes sense to move away from moderation towards curation. A ... read more >>
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