Defogging the Connection Between Social Media and Blogging

In the past week I have pondered long and hard, read and listened to quite a bit on how best to tie a blog in with social media such as MySpace and facebook. It is an excellent thing to do except I keep hearing about the 'no follow rule' and want to investigate that first. I can find  plenty of past debate on the subject and when I hit upon Goggle's Own Blog, which you too can read, I realise that the rule is very much a fait accompli and the control is with the blogging and social networking platforms. So back to social media.

Jon Ray posed the question "What is a Social Networking and Media Campaign?” in his blog last Monday. He explained how advertising and marketing has changed and that it is no longer a one way conversation and companies now have to listen to their customers who expect to be heard. It is about starting conversations. He explains how you manage social networking and exhorts us to contact him on Facebook, YouTube, Kyte, Seesmic, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, his Wordpress blog, invite him to your event through Upcoming, e.mail him or just call him on the phone. So that gives quite a list to start with and for the terrific detail I will refer you back to Who is Jon Ray?

Later in the week I listened to a podcast where Perry Marshall talked to Joan Stewart of PublicityHound.net as she gave her analysis of the  successful marketing campaign that Amazon ran for the Kindle. Joan explained why it had been successful and gave pointers on how small companies could learn from them in terms of having a plan. Joan's view is that an influential blog can give you more exposure than if CNN and The New York Times ran a story on you. On social media she advises deciding who you want to reach and finding where they are on the social networks. Then join the conversation and start to build relationships but avoid being overtly promotional. Some of her favourites are MySpace, facebook and Linkedin.

By chance a query about domains and servers led me to Ask Dave Taylor where the question had been raised "Is syndicating my blog postings a recommended tactic?" The short answer is sadly "NO". In essence:

=> Google and other search engines may penalise you for having duplicate content.

=> Could end up competing against your own content on other sites for higher search engine ranking.

=>If you use article syndication submit articles that you have never published on your own site.

=> In your RSS feed give the original title and an overview of a few freshly written sentences and not the content of the posting.

I recommend that you read the full article at Ask Dave Taylor.

So working slowly and diligently with a plan, while forgoing the temptation of cut and paste, is the way forward.

Comments

[Tracy]

Well Linkedin is pretty different than all the other networking sites. Linkedin is very professional than any other social networking site. It can be termed as business networking site. More than fun people join Linkedin for purpose. I came across this site from some of the Blog which say Linkedin can be accessed over the phone without internet. In fact with this service, Linkedin access will be even more convenient than ever.
http://modazzle.com/cms/modazzleLp1.html?channel=CM&camp=LinkedIn

[DefogMyBlog]

@Tracy I agree that Linkedin is for business and see that people are using the other networking sites for a mixture of social and business. I appreciate that you want to give them a plug. I think business people would miss the boat if they disregarded the social networks. I read only last night of one person with 9,000 friends on facebook. Hardly doing that for a bet is he?