by Rob Cottingham | Feb 9, 2009 | Social Signal
I recently had an email exchange with a few colleagues, sparked by a news columnist’s disdain for how two local public figures are using Twitter. And Darren Barefoot, after offering some solid advice, weighed in with this:
I get frustrated by all of the prescriptive behaviour around new technology. The early adopters (again, guilty) like to tell everybody how they should use a tool. I wrote about this recently (http://bit.ly/Lby9), and generally encourage people to do what seems right for them, as opposed to what the herd demands.
Michael Lewkowitz added,
[Twitter] changes with usage (how you use it and the tools you use to interface with it). It ‘responds’ to the individual more than any other of the tools.
They’re both touching on something crucial: how certainty bumps up against emergence.
Proclamations made with absolute certainty about social media are easy to find online. You have to use Twitter this way, never that way. You have to have a blogroll. You must read these three blogs or you’ll never understand YouTube, or SEO, or….
But the key ingredient of social media is people: diverse, divergent, idiosyncratic people. And there are likely to be differences large and small between how a tool works for me and how it works for you.
This is an emerging space, where the constantly-shifting landscape whirls (or Twhirls) around you, it’s tempting to cling to some hard-and-fast rule for dear life. But last week’s absolute certainty is this week’s laughable myth… and may be destined to rise again as next week’s hot new thing. (Push is it! Oh, wait, push is dead! Hang on, push is actually RSS and is it! Brands can never succeed in blogging! Brands that don’t blog will die a fiery death! Blogging itself is dead!)
And even the risk of wearing a little egg on your face is nothing next to the real price of Misplaced Certainty Syndrome: you don’t get to learn.
I like certainty as much as anyone. And there are many recommendations that I’ll make with confidence, in good faith, and which I’ll stand behind with no qualms. After all, the social media space may be young, but there’s a lot we can learn: from what’s worked (and hasn’t) so far, from the trajectory things are on, and from older means of communication and collaboration that have analogies in this brave new field. We can examine case studies, pore over metrics, draw the best from successes and learn from failures.
But some of the most satisfying, even mind-blowing experiences I’ve had in social media have come when I approach it with a spirit inquiry. That’s easy enough with a relatively new tool (like Twitter, oh those many months ago), but potentially a lot harder when it comes to technologies that are a little longer in the tooth. With them, the trick is to hold both confidence in the lessons we’ve already learned, and enough humility to recognize that everything is still on the table.
That’s what leaves us open to delightful surprises, to learning… and to the hierarchy-flattening, preconception-busting excitement that helps make social media such a great space to work in, and such a promising frontier for change.
And I’m confident of that. Not certain. Just confident.
by Rob Cottingham | Feb 8, 2009 | Social Signal
(one woman holding a telephone speaks to another woman, who is looking under a chair) It’s Google. They say you left your keys in the left-hand pocket of your other pants.
by Rob Cottingham | Feb 4, 2009 | Social Signal
(boss to employees) Owing to the economic climate, we’ve rejigged our compensation structure. Henceforth, you’ll be paid entirely in link love and Google juice.
by Rob Cottingham | Feb 4, 2009 | Social Signal
(one lover to another) But we can’t break up! Think of all the passwords we’d have to change!
by Rob Cottingham | Feb 2, 2009 | Social Signal
(woman backing away from a laptop that has sprouted scaly legs and a tail) Say, would you mind opening the readme file for that last Firefox extension?
by Rob Cottingham | Feb 2, 2009 | Social Signal
Check out any social bookmarking site – Delicious, for instance, or Digg – and you’ll see that a lot of the most popular pages being bookmarked have something in common: a number in the title.
It seems we’re crazy for the quantification. For instance, the most popular bookmarks in Delicious currently include a healthy dose of titles like “10 exceedingly useful Flash tutorials“, “35 Examples Of Beautiful City Photography” and “10 Companies Hiring for Work from Home“. (They’ve also included “15 fun things to do with Microsoft Excel“, which may be the most terrifying title in blogging history.)
I’m not one of the people who suggest you write every blog post as cynical, traffic-grubbing link-bait… but if you want to get people’s attention, why not try the magic of numbers-in-titles the next time you’re blogging?
Here are 10 ways to write a blog post that begs for one of those numbered titles:
- The tutorial: Tutorials are a natural. Just follow this simple three-step process:
- Break the instructions into steps.
- Number the steps.
- Place the total number in the title of your post, as in “The three-step guide to writing a tutorial with a number in the title.”
- The tip-sheet: Like a tutorial, the tip sheet offers helpful advice, but more as a series of suggestions instead of a sequence of steps. Just count them up, and you have “Eight ways to make waiting fun for your kids.”
- The toolbox: It’s a venerable tradition: the blog post that corrals a herd of related tools. Like “20 web apps for professional composters.” Or “15 utilities you’ll need when peak oil hits.”
- The ranking: Ranked lists and “top x” posts are all the rage, and rigorous methodology seems to be a purely optional frill. All you really need is a passion for the subject matter, and you too can write “The 20 best political ads of all time”. Better yet, there’s a good chance readers will weigh in in the comment threads with their own picks.
- The interrogation: But maybe you realize you don’t have all the answers. What you do know is what to ask… which leads to posts like “Six questions to ask your doctor before surgery.” Or “Four things to ask a new employee.”
- The stopwatch: The promise of achieving some concrete goal within a limited period of time can be awfully attractive. So this variation on the tutorial could lead you to write “Seven days to a balanced checkbook” or “Master contract bridge in 20 minutes”.
- The posse: Of course, social media is all about people… and a lot of numbered blog posts are all about assembling lists of heavy hitters in a particular field: “Five people who are changing the face of knitting”, for instance. (It doesn’t always have to be flattering, of course: “The 20 people who ruined the Republican Party” could also work.)
- The checklist: Feed your inner Basecamp-user with a checklist of must-do tasks (“10 daily essentials to keep your Papillion perky”) or goals (“The 100 jazz classics you need to recognize to pass as a music geek”).
- The exhibit: Maybe your roads-not-travelled include a career as a museum curator or gallery owner. Pulling together a collection of online media (“20 hilarious concert blooper videos” or “100 best cartoons about subways”) is your chance to put on a show of your own.
- The meme: Now, you’re taking your karma into your hands with this one. You so don’t want to be known as “the one who keeps sending around the blog memes.” That said, writing “Five things I’m bitterly ashamed of… now it’s your turn!” and tagging five friends to blog their five things can be your ticket to immortality. (Or, depending on your five things, infamy.)
