CopyDiva

Nothing sucks worse that a 404 error message. What’s a 404 error? Well, its when you click a dead link on a site and you get “sorry, this page doesn’t exist.” This can happen when a company changes or updates their website, when they yank down a promotion, or generally make changes to the navigation structure of a web site.

But, how cruddy is it when you change your blog URL, causing all the old article links to become dead? For a company, this is really bad form, and for a blogger too, especially if you want to have some kind of credibility. I mean really, how difficult is it to put up proper re-directs?

Bottom line: If you want people to find your amazing prose or deft analysis of something and hope to gain from the “long tail” of search, you will need to do one of two things:

1. keep the old site up and linked to the new one indefinitely: Jeremiah Owyang managed to do this very well, and even links to the archives from the old blog on his current blog
2. point re-directs from every post on the old blog to the URL of that post on the new blog: there are automated ways to do this when transferring over from one URL to another, but if you are prolific, Option 1 might be a better approach
3. (marginal at best) link back to the main page of your blog. NEVER link back to the main page of your web site, because the original link was for a blog post — that’s a sure way of getting people to leave - they want to read an article, not your sales pitch

Either way, if you are a company, chances are you’re blogging to improve your SEO, be seen as a thought leader and, generally speaking, gain more business. It makes you look bad if blog links go back to your main web site instead.

If you’re a blogger, you really want people to find your content, so don’t make it hard, otherwise you loose the long tail advantage of keeping your content up there, at least for a period of time.

Just as I was thinking about my follow-up post to my own social applications use post, Chris Brogan published an extensive list of social computing apps on his blog - and there are more in the comments, too. You could do nothing but waste time using all these apps.

How do you use, interact with, and communicate with social computing/social media tools? Lately, I have spent some time thinking about the way I use specific social computing tools and why others bore me, or why I simply have no interest in others. Certainly not a science, as these are my observations about my personal usage, but I do think that perhaps it bears some useful information, particularly about motivations, necessities, distractions, connections, and other words ending in -ion.

Blogging: Writing and Reading

The ol’ stalwart blogging. Yes, I blog, but certainly not an A-lister - more like a D-lister or lower. My blog isn’t bringing in money, nor is it set up to do that. I blog about mostly business topics that interest me. I am not really a personal blogger, except for the occasional anecdote. I blog for this blog, guest blog on occasion, and blog where I work.
As far as reading blogs, I subscribe to a number of blogs via Google Reader, but I have to say I rarely read them. Having worked at a social media measurement company, I am spoiled, and so I don’t like sifting through blog posts I don’t care about. So, I use Filtrbox to streamline my reading. I have a few filters set up, and I sift through those when I have time to peruse posts that are of interest. I am less interested in who is doing the writing, because there are plenty of unknown bloggers that write good, interesting, thought-provoking posts.

Generally speaking, I find a lot of interesting and relevant things to read through people I follow on Twitter and Friendfeed.

Micro-blogging or update services

Twitter: I use Twitter for updates that are both personal and business-oriented as well. I follow friends, business associates and interesting and important people in the social media space, and I am followed by similar folks. I don’t necessarily follow everyone who follows me. Early on, I did, but I found that some people were micro-verbose (meaning, they would tweet 6 or 7 tweets in a row, which is really annoying). So, I have reduced somewhat the number of people I follow, but am always adding new people as well.

How I access Twitter: I never login to Twitter’s web page to tweet, only to read profiles. I use Twirl as my desktop tweeting app (its also my friendfeed app). I don’t like having to visit web pages to update messaging, it takes too long and makes it even more disruptive than it needs to be.

What I hate about Twitter use: It’s bad enough when someone you’re talking to gets a phone call or email, but by far the rudest interrupter is getting tweets delivered to your phone. TURN IT OFF. I can certainly envision a helpful aspect to getting tweets to your phone — getting updates in an emergency, for example, or getting organized with a large group you are traveling with. But, I have to say, the tweets I get seem really not important enough to interrupt me when I am away from a computer.

FriendFeed: This very helpful aggregator of social tools, from Digg and Technorati to Plurk and Twitter to LinkedIn. After plugging in all my accounts, I have no reason to visit the FriendFeed site, except to find people to follow, which makes it very easy to interact with, at a low commitment level, which I prefer.

In part 2, I will discuss many other micro-blogging or update services, plus social networks.

Interesting posts I read this week, so far:

• Improving your website as a business asset and lead generator: This post at conversation marketing gives you concrete steps to take for a 3-hour improvement on your site (probably good for sites that don’t have 100’s of pages).
• WOM moneyback guarantee: WOM agency BzzAgent is challenging themselves by pitting their efforts against a typical interactive shop — if they don’t do 20% better than an agency, your WOM campaign is free. Kudos to them on that challenge, its very compelling.
• Top 50 Women Bloggers: Want to know which women bloggers have the most influence (granted, as per usual, this is a subjective analysis)? What really intrigued me about this story was the incredible diversity of topics of these women, from knitters to sex therapists to techno-geeks.
• Alisa Leonard has great, cheeky insights when I remember to read them. She added to her list of things to do when you want to get social.

Here are some interesting posts that I have found over the last few days. How do I find my links? Certainly not through RSS — I don’t have time to peruse all that content. I get interesting reads from tweets from the people I follow, links posted on Facebook by friends and also by using Filtrbox, a great little tool for social media/online content monitoring that was started by local Boulder entrepreneur Ari Newman. I search for content related to social media and also online surveys (because I do some consulting for another local start up called SurveyGizmo).

Challenges of corporate blogging: Jeremiah’s post certainly hits on some of the exact concerns that many marketers at large companies face. I seem to talk about this with marketers at least a few times a week.

Targeting social media: On the mediapost blog, a Q&A with Jim Calhoun from Popular Media that talks about some of the interesting things they are doing for customers using behavioral targeting. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim last week, smart guy with a great sense of humor, which is always a good combination.

Looking for a social media job? (well, now that you mention it…yes) Jim Durbin has started a head hunting firm to match social media experts with companies that want them. Seems like a good idea.

The other night, my S.O. was torturing me with bad music from the 70’s and 80’s. One particularly bad song that made its way into the cue was “One Toke Over the Line.” So who exactly recorded that song? Definitely a one-hit wonder group called Brewer & Shipley. Not only are they a one-hit wonder, I honestly wish I never had to hear that song again. Kind of the same way I feel about 90% of heavy metal bands from the 80’s but that’s a different blog post…

So the one-hit wonder of music got me thinking about the one-hit wonders in social media marketing and buzz. You know, the ones you hear about as big successes that never seem to work again. And frankly, it has been so long since I have heard one that I cannot even think of any, but I am certain there is a YouTube example, a Facebook apps example, a Tell-a-friend example, a corporate blog example, a Twitter, you get the idea.

So, what I am hoping is that now that at least some hype is dying down, a few things have and are happening:

1. Companies are being more thoughtful about their social media engagement
2. Companies are getting down to the real business of gaining an understanding of social media tools and creating strategies based on their customer, partner and vendor requirements

Though both of these statements are probably true for a small portion of companies, I hate to say that I still regularly hear from people that “My boss says we need a blog” or “Our agency says that everyone needs a presence in Second Life.” Or something else equally thoughtless. Sigh.

Remember folks, these are tactics. Tactics are not a strategy. Like everything in business, it helps to have a strategy that you go after with specific tactics. Tactics for their own sake are bound to produce disappointing results.

As you can see, its been a while since my last post to this blog. Sure, a lot of it has to do with time that I have available (and, suddenly, I have more time, sort of). Because lets face it, if you are a blogger that blogs every day — or even every week — you need to have something along the lines of an editorial calendar. And, I know some very disciplined bloggers who are like that, or who have so much stuff thrown their way that they don’t really have to think up ideas on posting on their own.

But I do. So, even though I haven’t been blogging lately, I have definitely been tweeting. In fact, until I left Collective Intellect a few weeks back, I was tweeting on two accounts — CollectiveIntel and CopyDiva. Two different accounts, two different approaches to my tweet stream.

Since I am a fan of brevity, perhaps Twitter is simply a better medium for me, with the 140 character limit. Hmmm. And the instant gratification of using Twitter, which anyone who follows me can read what I post, means I don’t have to wonder if my 140 character epics are being read. Yes, it is.

Also, tweeting seems more relationship-oriented. I am not a Brad Feld or a Wonkette, with a following that’s waiting to read and respond to my every word. But, I do get direct messaged on Twitter, or replies to questions or tweets I post, which satisfies my need for dialogue more than blogging can (though certainly, comments are still thrilling).

Just posted on the Collective Intellect blog my opinions related to the whole issue of measuring influence in social media. This is an important question for folks in marketing, advertising and PR these days, because everyone is trying to figure out how to monetize (I know, hate that word) social media.

What concerns me about that whole “making money” aspect is that too many agencies will convince their clients to jump into social media before they (the agencies and the clients) understand what they are doing. This already happens — in fact, we were just arguing about that in the office this morning when one of our partners asked for ideas for a social media campaign. It was clear from the request that the partner is still relatively clueless about good potential uses for social media campaigns.

The result is that users will just jump on the next bandwagon (newer app, fewer advertisers) to try to get away from the onslaught. It’s time for advertisers to realize that the whole model is broken. Why do you think TiVO’s are so popular?
Anyhoo. Back to the influence measurement. Since social media is dynamic, you cannot measure influence like you do in traditional media, where influence remains relatively static. To find out more about my opinion, visit this link to my post at the Collective Intellect blog.

This workshop was presented by the very dynamic Avinash Kaushik. Avinash really set up the story well, in that measurement of traffic doesn’t work anymore (”google analytics only gives you a slice“). He spoke about know you need many different measurement tools to measure success of a blog and in general of online presence because the way content is distributed is radically changed. So, it is now much more challenging to measure engagement online, because there is no one tool that does it all.

To read more from this post, visit the rest of it at the Collective Intellect blog.

This morning at 10:15m, I will be co-presenting a seminar on Tracking Reputation in the Blogosphere, with two of my Boulder colleagues, Ari Newman of Filtrbox and Howard Kaushansky from Umbria. If you’re in Vegas for BlogWorld, stop in to our session, ask questions and stay and listen for a while, it should be an interesting conversation. One of the things I will discuss in whether reputation always matters for companies in every industry. Plus, just like in middle school, reputation is only as good as the people who like you, so understanding who those different influencers are is very important to gaining understanding of your reputation. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to blog other sessions later — at the very least, I will Twitter my experiences. Follow me at Twitter here or here.