OK, you may not like what I have to say here, it’s a bit of a rant so…

This is all to do with Social Media/Interactive/Blah Blah Blah “Professionals.”

If you don’t have a blog why would anyone trust you.

If your not the first Google result for your name, and in on the first page for some important keywords your not doing it right.

If your using Blogger you need to move! There just aren’t enough options there.

If you don’t have a domain name for your blog you don’t know how to own the content. I don’t care if you use TypePad or WordPress.com but, pay for a domain and pay them to use it! If you move

If you don’t allow comments, or you moderate out any negative ones you don’t get the space.

I’m sure there’s more, maybe I’ll update st some point but I’m done for now.

</rant> And let the flame wars start in the comments below!

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Technorati Tags: blog, blogger, comment, interactive, professional, rant, social media, socialmedia, typepad, wordpress

VOICEMAIL

There I said it! No one likes voicemail. I had this conversation with some people this morning, about a half hour after which I called one of those people and guess what? I got their voicemail!

Does ANYONE answer their phone anymore? Do people just let every call go to voicemail under the assumption that they’ll get back to them?

I get this a lot at work. “I called you last week and left a voicemail.” To which I reply “No you didn’t.” Then they protest, “Yes I did. It was on Friday.” After that my standard answer is “Sorry, It’s impossible we don’t have voicemail r even an answering machine!”

I know your probably baffled by this. Our theory is if we’re here we’ll answer, we have three phone lines that all roll over so if they are all busy you’ll get a busy signal and call back in 5 min. If there is no answer we’re not here so call back in the morning. The key is actually answering the phone and helping your customers!

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I’ve heard a lot of people who are becoming the “social media professional” at their place of employment because they are already on Twitter or have had a blog for a while and I’m not on board with this attitude.

Sure they might be the most knowledgeable person around but they may not be the right person for the job. Now I have to say that sure everyone has a different opinion as to what each company should be doing in the social media space but there are a lot of right and wrongs for everyone.

I do believe that anyone who is going to be the go to person for social media should have a blog, be on facebook and use Twitter but this does not a social media Sherpa make.

I’ve had some discussions with people to try and come up with a way to qualify people and it’s not an easy task to accomplish. There are a lot of snake oil salespeople out there as well as a lot of people that deserve a lot more attention for what they are doing. The big question is how can we make it easy for those looking for a little help in this space to find the person who is right for them?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Technorati Tags: blog, facebook, media, sherpa, social, socialmedia, Twitter

Photo Credit to gaetanlee

Then

Back when I first got into podcasting, very early on, every podcaster did whatever they could to make their audio files as small as possible. We did this to cut down on the server space needed to host our shows and the bigger problem was to save on bandwidth costs.

We didn’t have services like Libsyn that gave you unmetered space to use. We had to worry about either getting our service turned off or getting a GIANT overage bill.

Those days are long gone, we have Libsyn as well as other host that will give bandwidth free or so close to free that it isn’t a concern.

Now

What people are worrying about now is bandwidth caps on you home and mobile connections. The home connection still isn’t that big a deal unless your watching a lot of high definition content but mobile could be of growing concern.

Maybe it’s a bigger deal here in Canada but even on the most liberal plane, Rogers 6GB on the iPhone, and applications like RSS Player are causing us to use more bandwidth while on the go.

What I Want To Know

I got to thinking on the drive home today, should we as content producers start to think about how we can wrap our contnet into a smaller package again?

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Technorati Tags: bandwidth, iphone, media, Mobile, Podcast, rssplayer, size

So I read the Long Tail a little while back, one of the ideas is that when there is infinite choice sales from nice items combined are greater then the hits. I think this is a bit situational.

I Agree

I agree with the when your talking about items like books, CD’s or DVD’s. For one you can’t argue with hard numbers from Amazon! And in theory because you are looking for something in particular You’re trying to find an obscure album from whoever, or a DVD copy of Soylent Green!

I Disagree

One example in the book is about cars. Sure there is 1K models of cars but you see you know when you go out looking for a car that you want a 4 door sedan in the 30K range. When it comes to choosing a colour for that sedan this is where you can have too much choice. See you may want red but if there is seven reds that choice becomes daunting. Go look at the colour pallet for new cars, there is likely one one, maybe two reds.

Real World

I’ve heard this story a pile of times, so now it’s your turn. My Dad always tells this to people. Long before I was born, before my Dad was even my age, my Grandfather used to run a general contracting business. One of the jobs he did all the time was kitchen renovation. When it came time to pick the colour of the counter tops, it ALWAYS took the homeowner (read: wife) days (weeks even) to pick the colour. See there were hundreds of sample colours to choose from. So here’s my Grandfather, new job quoted waiting to go ahead and start on it waiting on a colour choice before he can get to work. Now my Grandfather was a pretty smart guy so after not long he and my Grandmother sat down, sorted through all the colours and picked the nicest three or four from each general colour. Now with a choice down to considerable few he rarely waited more then overnight!

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Technorati Tags: choice, longtail

Photo Credit jordandouglas

Problem

It’s seams that some of the bigger group blogs are starting to get too much content. It’s becoming a mess, to the point where I think it’s hurting them.

Example

Just last week (maybe longer ago) I found this great music blog NXEW. They have people all over Canada blogging about niche (indie) music at small venues in a variety of cities. I freaking LOVE it. Problem is I really can’t keep up to every post. You see while passively I’d love to hear about great new band X’s show in Vancouver last night. Realistically I’d like to read about it when I have time, not in my feed reader 5 minutes after it’s published. What I want to hear about is the John Doe and The Sadies show at Call the Office on the weekend.

One Solution

I don’t want to see these groups fragment to smaller blogs, I think having all the content on one domain is useful. I think that one of the best and simple solutions is to setup a variety of feeds. One with everything so those who want it all can get it, and other based on location or genre, etc.

Another

Maybe a platform like WordPress MultiUser is in order!

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