Archive for July, 2009
How I Filter The Noise, Hermione Way
Hermione Way (@HermioneWay) is an entrepreneur and journalist, She is founder of newspepper.com and techfluff.tv and was named as on of The Spectator’s Stars of Tomorrow.
Netvibes
Every morning the first thing I do is open my Netvibes account. This pulls all the stories from my favorite news sites (BBC, Mashable, Wired, TechCrunch, Telegraph, TheNextWeb). Not only does it pull in these news sites but it also pulls in my Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. The reason why i choose Netvibes over Google Reader is because of the layout format. It shows me all the sites in mini format, on one page just like a newspaper. It enables me to check all my news without having to leave the site.
Tweetdeck
As more and more people are becoming their own news outlets, Tweetdeck enables me to follow the streams of people i deem bring me important informative news about my industry. For example i follow Mike Butcher, iJusine and Robert Scoble’s Twitter feed to see what they are up to, who they are meeting and any links they share.
Twitter hashtags
Twitter search enables me to search for a topic or subject of interest eg. #iranelection Twitter search produces real time search results for the searched topics which enables me to find out what people are thinking/talking about right now on a topic.
‘Interactive’ Websites Need to Evolve Faster
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. I am a huge history buff and a big fan of all things NASA and all things JFK. So when someone on Twitter pointed me to the JFK Library re-enactment of the moon landing, I was kind of excited to take a look.
The website is by the Martin Agency (and for some reason in connection with AOL) that celebrates the anniversary with a high media flash site that allows you to experience what happened with the landing in real time. A pretty cool concept, no doubt.
Interactive? I Guess So
The site is definitely focused on a high media experience. Cool interactive angles of the Apollo craft and the trip they take, along with great audio of the whole mission. In the traditional sense of being “interactive” it is a quality production for sure (minus some insanely small text). My critique is that the site is one sided. I can watch and listen to this cool thing, but I want to engage with other people about it. And I will likely, but it would have been so much cooler if that engagement was better facilitated and grouped on the site.
Social? Nope
Where they lost me is a pretty lame implementation of any interaction and real connection with the people involved with Apollo 11. They have 3 Twitter accounts hooked up to the experience (@AP11_EAGLE as Houston Control, @AP11_SPACECRAFT as Apollo 11 Craft, and @AP11_CAPCOM as the Apollo 11 Landing Craft). I think they are using Twitter integration pretty minimally, and beyond Twitter, there are tons of things they could have done to improve the social nature of the site.
I have seen several blog posts mentioning the Apollo Anniversary, including a great post of at WebInkNow by David Meerman Scott about taking some marketing lessons from Apollo. Showing me the chatter on the web about Apollo or about NASA in general would be a nice reflection on the legacy. Show me the Youtube videos and Flickr photos about NASA and Apollo. Give me a live chat on the site where I can connect to my friends on Facebook or Twitter. Get on Facebook and either create or partner with pages for each of the famous people involved in the historic day. Brand mascots, especially historic figures, are a great way to add some depth to the connection you form with the end user.
These are all minor things, but I really wanted to engage others about this cool site, a reenactment of a great moment in American History and the site did not make that easy to do.
Reach Out To Existing Social Profiles
NASA has done some cool things on Twitter and Facebook with their different missions and Mars Landers. Maybe even beef up the JFK Library Twitter account or talk to Twitter about claiming @JohnFKennedy for some rousing quotes from Kennedy’s famous speeches about going to the moon. The 3 accounts the site did use barely sent out any content (12 tweets total by my count) prior to today’s reenactment. There was no building of momentum or interest.
Show Me People, Not Anonymous Cold Call Signs
The accounts are not names, they are call signs. The account are not people, they are groups of people involved with the Apollo 11 mission, and even the lander has an account. Show me real people, a face as an avatar, one person per account. Give it some personality. I connect better with people, not call signs.
Follow Someone, Talk to Someone
The Twitter accounts as they are now do not talk to anyone but each other, do not follow anyone but each other, and in general are one way, broadcast channels. This does very little for me. What this gives me, is much more interesting if I get the live audio directly from the site. I don’t connect with it. It does not drive me to ask questions, to get involved, to engage.
It would have been a little bit of a time investment, but well worth it to assign real people to Twitter and Facebook as the actual personalities that made up the mission. A couple of the astronauts, the main voices at Mission Control, even an astronaut’s wife, or JFK, or an enthusiastic kid listening to the radio with bated breathe waiting for them to reach the moon.
Overall, it was a really nice site, and I left the amazing audio up for a little while, listening to the Apollo 11 mission. But I think the media would have shined a little more if people could interact more intimately with the story.
What do you think, was an opportunity missed or not?
Bring On The Social Media False Prophets
There is a constant tug of war within the new industry of social media between people that consider themselves the thought leaders of the industry and the unending “sharks” launching themselves as social media experts every day.
The simple act of labeling yourself as a social media expert of any kind can turn stomachs for many. It is that bad. But, I say bring on the false prophets. Worry about the issue no longer.
Why is this not a problem? Why should you not worry about it?
- It happens with every new marketing channel
- You will not get rid of the “sharks”
- Negative energy sucks
- The best combat is to be good at what YOU do
Think back to SEO, to website development, to PR even. A balance always evolves between the people that can really help companies navigate these new technologies or strategies and those just trying to make easy money.
Consumers are smart. Not the individual consumer necessarily, but as a whole. They vote with their wallet. They hire according to recommendations. They may make a mistake or two and may even get turned off to social media as a whole because they hire someone who is clueless.
Let them.
Educate the people you can. Do good work for your customers and clients. Be the change you want to see in the industry.
Call it as you see it, for sure. But don’t get too caught up in the negative. It is rarely constructive.
How I Filter The Noise, Beth Harte
Beth Harte is a marketer, blogger, speaker, communicator, thinker, connector (people & dots), adjunct professor and Community Manager for MarketingProfs. Beth’s blog, The Harte of Marketing is featured in AdAge’s Power 150. Beth also blogs for MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog.
The more you engage in social media, the more you realize that there are a lot of folks out there talking just to talk and that there are some folks that aren’t as well known, but are absolutely brilliant. Of course, brilliant is a highly subjective term. For me brilliance isn’t someone who’s like Einstein. For me a brilliant person is the one who has a unique voice, isn’t a lemming, questions the status quo, always tries to spark a conversation (no matter how small or large) with an insightful post, tweet or comment, and someone I learn something new or different from.
So, how do I cut through the clutter to find these brilliant people?
Tweetdeck
When dealing with Twitter, I like to use Tweetdeck because it allows me to create groups…lots of groups! I create groups of friends, people who tweet on certain topics, keywords – you name it!
The more I can slice and dice (I am a marketer, after all), the more I can find those brilliant people and nuggets of information that they might be sharing.
BackType
BackType is a cool site that allows you to keep track of your comments, people who have commented about you and, more importantly, the comments that people you follow leave for others. BackType also allows you to search on keywords, again, very helpful to a marketer. The best part about BackType is I can see where the people I follow leave comments, which helps me to find blogs or smart folks that I may not have known about.
Google Reader
I’d be lost without my Google Reader. Every time I find a new blog using the tools above, I add it to my Google Reader. You can imagine that over time, I have a TON of blogs bookmarked. Every morning, I change the reader to the “All Items” view and I scroll down all the posts, not by blogger…but by date. Those with the best or intriguing titles win my attention. Again, I also look for posts on topics, people’s names, and information I might not have had access to previously.
These tools might seem basic, and perhaps not so cool, but for a marketer, they relieve a lot of the time burden that social media places on us.
How I Filter The Noise, Taylor Davidson
Guest blog post by Taylor Davidson (@tdavidson); innovation, photography, travel and entrepreneurship, in some continually shifting combination and order.
Each one of us makes a very personal decision about how to find, filter and understand information to help us live our lives and succeed in our careers. Our goals, interests and personal styles shape what, why and how we sift through the content and context created by the maze of interactions on the web. Instead of focusing on the strategies and tactics that I use to filter the web, consider my own methods and tools as just the best way that I know how, right now, to achieve what I want; like all of us, I’m always looking for ideas and ways to improve.
Considerations and Creating a General Philosophy
Before you think about tools, think about you and what you want to achieve: how much time do you have to devote to consuming information? How much noise is “too much” for you? What methods have you tried, for how long, and what has been successful for you? What networks do you use to connect to people and information? What do you want to do with the information, insights and (hopefully) knowledge that passes through your filters? For example, do you want to find new sources of information, cut out repetitive sources, reduce the time you spend online, spend more time creating, automate your filters, focus on breaking news or in-depth, timeless analysis?
Think about these questions to create your own strategies and goals, but I’ll start with outlining my general philosophy:
- I devote an hour or two a day to reading news and in-depth analysis, and I like following a range of topics and a wide range of people.
- I’m willing to dig through a fair amount of noise to find great signals.
- I try to use algorithms and people to curate my news; I use a mix of searches and popularity-ranking algorithms to find information, but I depend on people to filter content and add their own analysis and point of view.
- I do not read newspapers or major primary news sources; again, I depend on interesting people to find what I should read.
- I feel no need to read everything that pops through my filters; if it’s important enough, it will find me again eventually.
- I’m not terribly concerned with keeping up with the real-time web; it often takes a bit of time to truly process new information and understand the second-order impacts.
- I love to engage bloggers and comment on posts in order to learn, refine my thoughts, and dig deeper into topics with knowledgeable people.
- I want to structure and pass on the information that I find in a way that goes beyond just passing along information but adds something to the conversation, whether it’s an insight, a connection between bits of information or people, or simple something too interesting not to share with my friends.
Given the philosophy, how do I do it?
Using Feeds to Follow People: Blogs, Backtype, Twitter
Blogs continue to be the focus of my filtering efforts due to my focus on long-form content, but as more and more content and interactions have shifted to micro-interactions I find myself needing to use more platforms to find information, links and people.
I use Backtype to create RSS feeds of searches through comments for terms and topics of interest, but I truly enjoy following the comment streams (using RSS feeds) from individuals as a way to see what is truly important to them.
I use Twitter to find links to information, but I don’t use any special tools or tactics other than dipping into the stream from time to time. I use feeds from Twitter search to follow certain keywords, but I also follow @ replies to certain people to see who is talking to them or sharing information with them.
Organizing the Feeds: Google Reader and PostRank
I know many people have sworn off RSS, but I continue to use RSS and RSS readers (my personal choice: Google Reader) as a way to consolidate the streams of information. I use RSS to bring to me a mix of blogs, searches and Google Alerts to follow the web, and I use categories in Google Reader to attempt to structure the information . I have a “best” category to follow the sources I find to be consistently interesting and a mixture of other categories organized into different topics or goals. This is far from static: I add and remove feeds, blogs, categories constantly to find new sources of information and new ways to organize.
Additionally I use PostRank and AideRSS’s Google Reader Firefox extension to integrate PostRank with Google Reader in an attempt to figure out which posts are “can’t-miss”; but given that I am open to sifting through a lot of noise and that I depend on many people that do not have a huge following, I find Postrank isn’t the best fit for my own filtering strategies. I’ve tested BlogRollr and Filtrbox to find and filter information, but I’m always on the lookout for new algorithms and methods for adding more “relevance” and context to my filtering tactics.
Yes, that’s a simple set of tools, somewhat inefficient and ripe for over-consumption, but the benefits from depending on loose networks and “structuring serendipity” to introduce me to great concepts, insights and people is simply too great to give up … yet.
