Skittles.com
Social Media sharing icons are becoming ubiquitious, Clients ask for better social media integration on their website and they generally mean they would like these social media icons on their page/site/content. In my oponion there are two types of social media icons by function. The first, which I’m not going to spend too much time on in this post, is the “We have a presence here” Icons
Presence Icons
levi.com
These Icons are in a consistant place on a website, typically in a header or a footer, and simply communicate to the user that we have a presence on these social networks. These icons used to say Find us on Facebook, or Follow us on Twitter, or Fan us on Facebook, or even Like us on Facebook. (There is so much wrong with the last one, but thats for another day!)
techcrunch.com
I have no problem with these Icons, they do what Icons do best, effectively communicate a larger concept, and frankly the larger concept (we have a presence on this network or that network) belongs on these sites.
getonboard.com - Transit blog
These Icons have their place and are not for debate in this post, however the other Social Media Icons are.
Content Sharing Icons
mashable.com
These are the icons you most often see at the bottom or top of a blog post, an individual piece of content that can be shared on one of these social networks. sometimes they are labeled “Share and Enjoy” othertimes they are not labeled. And even in this category there could be two different sub-categories, but for today’s arguments I’m going to lump them into one. It is my attempt in this post to show how these social media icons are over used, unnecessary, and an old concept rehashed.
Social Media Icons are Over Used
getonboard.org - Transit Blog
We are starting to see these Icons everywhere, and I’m not referring to the Facebook “Like” button that will grow to ubiquity as well. Any site that is current is or has already applied these to their content. The ones that make me laugh the most are contact us pages with the sharing icons. Who would want to have a discussion about your contact page? Do you really think that’ll go viral? I mean your phone number is sexy and all but I doubt I want to share that with my grandma on Facebook ;)
Social Media Icons are Unnecessary
nytimes.com
And why have these Icons? Anyone who is savvy enough to use these networks, who would really make something spread/go viral is going to know how to copy/paste the URL in the network they want to and with the options/content/context that they want to set.
techcrunch.com
Most of my target audience with this blog is similar in skill set as I am, I rarely find a need to use these, I much prefer to put my own title, my own bit.ly account information and my own privacy settings on something I share, why then wouldn’t I just copy/paste the URL?
Sharing Icons are the same as tell a friend from the 90s
lifehacker.com
Yeah you remember those… where it had a little email envelope, may have used the word share, but most often said tell a friend. You could then type in their email addy, and yours, a subject and a message. Ironically Email is still the best social network to make content go viral. But we can’t access the analytics on that. (Note the lifehacker image to the right, still has an “Email this” link.)
Wordpress plugin, sexy bookmarks
Email and Tell a Friend also prove the previous point of being unnecessary, most people copy and paste urls into emails, they don’t use tell a friend, why do we think they will use the sharing icons?
cnn.com
The long and short of it: If you create good (remarkable) content people will discuss and share it, no matter what tool set you provide, or don’t provide for them. So if you are adding these icons to then label your site as integrated with social media you are missing the boat. It’s about the substance of your content, not the icons.
Before you get all crazy on me in the comments for slamming icons you love, realize that some of what is written here may be from me playing devil’s advocate. I’m trying to argue for the oponent’s side to see if they are right. With that said, what parts of this article do I agree with? Good luck.
Google recently released an update to its display of content called Real-Time Search. At first I thought this would be a better experience than twitter search or facebook search, because its from the king of Search, Google. Unfortunately it has become apparent that this was more of a knee-jerk reaction to Bing’s Twitter Search announcement less than 50 days earlier.
We knew that Google and others were indexing the tweet stream earlier this year, but this is a game changer in how they have integrated their display of tweets with standard results.
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I implore you to investigate Twitter lists. A New feature rolled out by twitter last week. A quote from twitter’s own non-micro-blog:
“We believe Lists will be a new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.”
I have to underscore that. There are great list strategies and great twitter lists being created and curated everyday. I’ve tried to list some lists and catoroize them to give some inspiration. There is no way to include the thousands of lists, nor the many different list making strategies, I’ve tried to cover the basics with links to more information.
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Thank you Flickr user xjy
Are you kidding me? He’s going to be just like one of those other SEO guys who blog about blogging or about blog content?
Yes, and No.
I have been struggling lately with this concept and so I’m going write my struggles and invite you into a process/growth/learning/development I’m going through.
Content is King
If you haven’t heard it before, please search on the terms content and king. You will find a wealth of bloggers discussing how it’s about the content you put out there.
It’s true: A Twitter profile, a YouTube channel, a Facebook fan page, a blog, these are all methods of putting content out there. So to be social, to take advantage of the new marketing style, one has to have content.
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The Furniture City Sets the Table for the World of Art 2
Yeah, I’m a believer. I believe that Art is cool, but I’m not an artist. I’m a Michigan Citizen from a great town called Grand Rapids, The “Furniture City”. Starting on Wednesday September 23 2009 there will be a new competition called ArtPrize in town and I am loving the buzz and activity it is creating.
Typically I blog about social media, or strategy, or tactics like twitter and facebook, but this is different. This is about integrating art and social media, about using the new tools to reflect what we do in real life, faster and more efficiently. The organizers of Artprize originally claimed it was going to be an American-Idol-Style voting, what I didn’t realize was how much they were planning on leveraging Social Media. When I realized that the artists basically had to earn their votes in what ever means they could I saw the potential for social media. So that’s when I got involved. I am passionate about social media and business, I believe that all businesses could improve with the correct usage of social media. Just like these artists who are vying for a vote could get more votes with the correct usage of social media. – more on that here: micro blog on artprize
Policies: The Blame Game?
I recently asked for help in Drafting up some example Social Media Policy and Strategy Documents, I have had a number of responses both on twitter and offline.
I’d like to highlight a couple of those today regarding Social Media Policy.
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