Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day

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■ WEEK 5: SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

Week 5: Social

Interactions

In Chapter 9, “Social Platforms,” I presented

personal and business networks along with white-

label services through which you can build your

own social spaces and applications. In Chapter10,

“Social Content: Multimedia,” and Chapter 11,

“Reviews, Ratings, and Recommendations,” I

presented the content that people create on the

Social Web, content ranging from casual, short-

burst conversations on Twitter and personal

reflections like ratings and recommendations to

more thoughtful blogs, reviews, conversations,

and multimedia.

You can think of these as the nouns of the

Social Web, the people, places, and things of inter-

est to those who posted them and as well to those

who commented on them and shared them with

friends. This chapter is about the verbs, the con-

nective threads that tell you what’s happening.

Chapter Contents

Connecting the Dots

Managing Social Information

The Main Points

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c h a p t e r 12: WEEK 5: SOCIAL INTERACTIONS ■

Connecting the Dots

Social Interactions — the third big collection of channels making up social media —

consist of the messages, feeds, and emails that flow as social content is created, discov-

ered, consumed, repurposed, and shared. I used the expression “connective threads” in

the introduction: on the Social Web anyone can make something and put it out there.

But if no one knows about it, how social is it? The updates, feeds, and emails — the

connective threads — tell you to go look, that something new is waiting for you.

Taken together, these activity indicators become social content in and of them-

selves. They not only represent and carry information, in many cases they are the infor-

mation. For example, consider Seesmic, a video conversation service. Using Seesmic,

you create and post a new video or video reply, and instantly it’s also pushed over to

Twitter where people see the title of your video as if it were a post like any other. This

secondary notice tells the participants in communities outside of the one you are in

right now — in this case Seesmic — what you are doing at this moment, but some-

where else. That is social content, just like any other post on Twitter. This kind of

information is what increasingly powers the Social Web, pulling people together and

driving conversations, including those that you are interested in as a marketer.

As a more general example of the tools that make it easy to follow what’s going

on around you, consider FriendFeed. FriendFeed simultaneously aggregates, organizes,

and then directs information about social content from those who create it toward

those who want to know about it. FriendFeed provides pointers to nearly all of the

content that those around you create — Twitter posts, Flickr uploads, and more.

What’s the benefit of a tool like FriendFeed to you as a Social Web participant?

Instead of visiting a dozen places to see what someone that you may be interested has

done recently, you subscribe to them via FriendFeed instead. When you see something

new that interests you in the feed, you can jump directly to that content. Otherwise, if

not interested, you just continue doing whatever you were already doing,

Through tools such as FriendFeed, Social Web participants are able to manage

very large amounts of information: the updates literally flow to them, as they happen.

As a marketer, you can efficiently follow the influencers that matter to you. It’s a lot

Note: I have used Friendfeed in this chapter as an example of the services that simplify the use of social

updates. Ping.fm and SocialThing are worth looking at too. If they’re in beta, request a beta code from a friend.

You can usually find someone in your Twitter following who can set you up with an access code.

FriendFeed: http://www.friendfeed.com

Ping.fm: http://ping.fm

SocialThing: http://socialthing.com

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