The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success

Chapter 4. Everyone's a Publisher

The next six chapters look at the Publish category of the social media ecosystem. This broad category is a little misleading because technically you can publish all kinds of content, including video, audio, photos, and games. The Publish category has been organized to include the topics of e-mail, web pages, Internet forums, blogs, and wikis—tools that predominantly have been text based. That was yesterday, however. Today, nearly all of the tools in the Publish category can accommodate numerous applications from other categories. Your blog can have video. Your e-mails can include audio. Your wiki can have images, video, and audio. What's important to remember is that with social media, content is king. With the right content, you can attract an audience whose interests, activities, and needs can be monetized. Let's take a quick look at some social media publishing stories and see why (1) content is king, and (2) if you've got content, you are indeed a publisher.

Four Stories of Profitable Social Media Publishers

On his way to becoming a medical doctor, a funny thing happened to Arnold Kim; he became a publisher. Kim's blog site, MacRumors.com, attracts 4.4 million people a month and has emerged as one of the most popular technology destinations on the Web. What attracts that many people each month? A strong dose of speculation, gossip, rumor, user tips, and other information about Apple Computer and its products. What began as a hobby in 2000, before ...