Into the Driver's Seat

At the end of this article I’ve listed my top ten most influential power users. But before you skip down to see who they are, let me show you why they are so influential in the first place.

Google+ had a hot start, but has since cooled down. For a lot of people, that means ignoring Google+. I want to warn you that is a bad idea.

Although the lights are on and it seems like nobody is home, trust me: there are people there. And they are the very people who can have a huge impact on your blog and business.

Why Google+ isn’t going anywhere

Google+ is designed to draw you away from both Twitter and Facebook. And in time, it could do this.

Yes, Facebook has over 800 million users. People like to state that number and then say “Facebook isn’t going anywhere.” Fair enough. But people do migrate. It happened to AOL. And it could happen to Facebook. In fact, former Facebook president Sean Parker says influencers are already moving from FB to Twitter and Google+.

One of the things many people struggle with in social media are identity issues, and I am no different. Up until yesterday, my main Facebook entities included my personal profile and my fan page for Kikolani. While I love both of these, I found some problems with sharing links to posts I’ve done elsewhere. Specifically…

- Links I’ve posted to my personal profile lately haven’t gotten that much attention compared to plain status updates or photos.
- The fan page for this blog is focused on posts from this blog only. Fans didn’t sign up for posts from elsewhere.

So the solution was creating a new Facebook page. This page is specifically focused on my freelance writing and blogging as a whole so it can be a platform where I can share links to anything I have written anywhere...

As part of my on-going work developing social media for business units, I’m often asked about what types of tools I used for tracking all that ‘social media stuff.’

Let me talk about how I go about creating a social media dashboard

The basic answer is that I don’t have one tool (I have dozens, if not hundreds.)

The real answer is that I am not tracking social media.
I am tracking key performance indicators (KPI)
I don’t care if it is a shipping problem or a viral YouTube video.
I simply want to know how I can track it, manage it, and maximize results.

With that said: when I think about creating a social media dashboard or using a platform to track results… I am looking at several unique business identifiers that define what tool I need for the job at hand...

I hope you enjoyed part one of what I learned the first year.

The original post was packed with so much information that I had to break it down into two parts or otherwise risk being labeled as verbose as Nitty.

The following are the remainder of the tips I learned the first year of blogging.

Take action. Do a little bit everyday.

It is easy to get caught up in reading, learning and planning on the internet. Plan away but if you don’t take action then you will get nowhere. If you don’t know where to start, then break your blog down into baby steps.

Take a week to map out your niche, then the next to map out what you want to include in your site? The following to come up with a logo and tagline and so on. You may need less than a week for each task.

Google+ unveiled itself to the public amidst a chorus of praise and adulation from techies all over the globe. Unfortunately, it also earned a good amount of scorn from individuals who were not ready to grasp the unique philosophy Google+ was promoting. That philosophy is one of openness.

Unlike Facebook, Google+ is designed to connect strangers, and inspire collaboration and contribution. It has proven to be an amazing platform for promoting ideas, brands and people.

Since its early rollout, Google+ has forced competitors to begin evolving, inspiring platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to develop new ways of thinking about social media and the functionality they offer.

Facebook recently changed the way users interact with content on fan pages: any user, including non-fans, can now post on fan page walls and like/comment/share fan page content. In other words, a Facebook user does not have to first like your fan page before they can interact with your content. This is a good thing!

Since this change, the emphasis has shifted slightly from gaining more likes (fans) to increasing the number of shares on each piece of content. When you craft your fan page updates in a manner that naturally inspires fans and their friends and visitors to your page to share with their networks, you set in motion ripples of viral visibility. Basically, free additional exposure...