This guest post comes from Mark Seall - Mark is the founding writer at TalkClimateChange and is also a regular contributor at ProBlogger. You can find Mark’s full Bio on his personal blog at marksblog.org.

Until recently, I have to admit to being very skeptical of the long term value of social media. My own experience has been relatively poor in that social media has provided me with few long term readers, which has lead me to discount its value, and largely ignore its potential. I said as much in a recent post on ProBlogger, at which point Brian Wallace took me to task and encouraged me to update my thinking.

My discussion with Brian made me realize that my current position on social media is in fact the complete opposite of the longer term thinking that I usually try to promote. In the long game, social media does indeed offer significant value through allowing smaller blogs to be noticed, enabling the cream of the blogosphere to rise to the top more quickly, and effectively democratising the media industry by allowing readers to determine what gets attention based on merit, instead of allowing editors to decide this for them.

Social media will undoubtedly change things for everybody, from bloggers at the lower end of the media food chain to the global news corporations at the top. Like good politicians, bloggers need to master the process of building a following and becoming nominated to stand in the daily social media elections (my own best performance has been a miserable 50 diggs, and about 15 stumbles – pretty poor), but what are the further implications of the social media phenomenon? Knowing that this revolution is coming, which strategies can be employed to fully exploit the opportunities that social media presents beyond simply becoming a top social media community member?

Right now I have a few emergent and ill-defined thoughts, and even fewer answers. I would like to use this post to share my musings and start a discussion before pretending to come up with some smart ideas of my own..

How will social media continue to be influenced?

I believe that blogs will represent a crucial media battleground in the coming years. Large media firms are beginning to exploit blogs as a cheap way to produce insightful content and win back readers who are being drawn in large numbers to savvy and entrepreneurial bloggers who are becoming increasingly organized, professional and consolidated. Social media will certainly play an important part in this battle, as large media seeks to influence by weight and small media seeks to influence by guile.

Will large media firms begin to exploit social media, or will they continue to rely on the strength of their existing brands? What are the wider implications for the blogosphere if large media firms truly engage in this market? To what extent will the media merge and differentiate?

What about the wider influence of social media on the landscape of content produced?

Democracy is not without its share of problems. Winston Churchill once declared that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all of the others have been tried.” Elaborating on these thoughts he later said “The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter”. Reading some of the comments on Digg one can derive some sympathy for that position!

As social media begins to evolve and increase its influence, will the resulting media democracy have a dramatic influence on the content created in the first place? Will editors begin to focus on stories that will bring in votes rather than on quality content? Will quality become less important or more important - or will it simply be defined by what is ‘diggable’?

With this in mind, if you were building a new blog enterprise today, what style of content would you go for? How much would social media influence your content and how central would it be to your overall content strategy? Are blogs which do not appeal to social media still viable?

Will branding continue to play an important role?

Good brands provide a promise which acts as a useful tool for consumers during the selection process. People go to CNN.com or news.BBC.com today because they know what to expect and what they are going to get. However, branding may begin to influence reader behaviour in other ways. Firstly, the rise of new media brands such as Digg will enable the media democracy and become an important and trusted news source, potentially relegating other brands to the position of content provider instead of content portal. Secondly, branding is likely to play some role in the social media voting process. Will voters vote purely on merit, or will they be more inclined to vote for sources they know? Will existing brands be able to use their brand power to leverage social media, or will we see a truly democratic democracy?

Will brand building remain important, or will the value of existing brands be stripped away by the new democratic process? Will social media truly level the playing field, or just partially redistribute it?

What impact will social media have on entrance barriers to the media world?

Before the advent of the Internet, getting published was a big deal. Before the advent of the blogosphere, getting noticed was a big deal. Today, with the right techniques and an interesting message it’s relatively easy to build a following, and by exploiting social media it’s possible to reach a very wide audience very quickly . As social media takes off and enters the mainstream, will it become easier or harder to enter the game?

Will individuals once again become lost in a sea of content as everybody fights over the same space within social media, or will new content creators be able to succeed purely on merit? Will the world of media see evolution or revolution?

These are questions which promise to occupy my mind for a good while. I’ll be back shortly with another post as my thoughts crystallize, but in the meantime I would love to hear your views.

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18 minute old Twitter account - 2 updates - 400 followers. The math doesn’t add up, does it?

You know what happened? Jason Calacanis said “follow him.” (I took out my angst on the picture, can you tell?)

I really enjoyed refreshing every 3 seconds to see another dozen or so followers adding Mr. Modine, and some automatic bot adding them back (Twitter couldn’t even keep up, if you’ll note the sole icon down in the bottom).

It happens every day - but that’s how Twitter works.

“Last month Alex Iskold suggested that there are 3 basic types of Twitter users.

There are listeners, who pull in a lot of information but don’t send much out. Talkers, who push information out to a lot of users, but don’t take much in. And there are hubs, people who both follow and are followed.

“Think of Twitter as a large network for information dissemination,” wrote Iskold. “It typically starts with talkers, flows through the hubs and ends up at listeners.” ” - ReadWriteWeb on TwitterMeThis

And it is this flow of Twitter that sent one of my favorite follows packing. Hugh MacLeod writes “I liked Twitter. But I found it too easy” as his lame excuse for leaving all his adoring fans hanging. We’ll miss you!

gapingvoid : No, seriously. I’m leaving Twitter. Cheerio. [Big Kiss]

I guess it’s back to Google, Yahoo, TechCrunch, Flickr, Youtube, Web 2.0, and blogs for the tweeter formerly known as @gapingvoid.

#YIF: Why I Follow

So there’s this thing called hashtags for Twitter, in case you didn’t know about them. Basically people stick them in their tweets and the themes get aggregated by hashtag aggregators, like Hashtags.org.

There’s all kinds of hashtags, like for conferences (#sxsw tracked the live micro-blogging of the South by Southwest Interactive conference) and political debates. #yif is the hashtag for “why I follow,” and you can really do some data mining with the stuff people say.

jljohansen: @chrisbrogan The 3 people I talk with the most on Twitter are @ikepigott @dough and recently @swhitley Always good conversations. #yif

danieljohnsonjr: @scottsigler #yif bcuz w/ his twisted mind, better to know where he’s coming from & going to. Infected: April 1st!

BarbaraKB: @CathleenRitt #yif Admits to “getting nothing done,” shares hair stories, does stand-up comedy while practicing financial wizardy in NYC.

To me, this is revolutionary. What other social tools encourage people to not only publicly state why they like you, but also track those responses for all the world to analyze?

Nowhere else but Twitter do you get an open book test on being popular.

#YUT: Why You Twitter

sonnygill@nowsourcing Never mocked, was just skeptical on its usefulness…boy was I wrong. Able to connect & converse w/industry leaders, how great.18 minutes ago from web in reply to nowsourcing

MarkLaymon @nowsourcing your obsessive talking about it made me follow it more, in doing so I have found it as an easy way to follow the smm industry 23 minutes ago from web in reply to nowsourcing

kdpaine @nowsourcing the iowa caucuses 24 minutes ago from web in reply to nowsourcing

TheNanny612 @nowsourcing The people, the conversation, the humor, great questions with helpful and inspiring answers. It is like IM on speed… love it!26 minutes ago from twhirlin reply to nowsourcing

bdthomas @nowsourcing I started out loving twitter, now I mock it. Regardless, I’m still addicted. 27 minutes ago from twitterrific in reply to nowsourcing

BarbaraKB @nowsourcing never knocked it. been an addict for a year now. may need to delete like @gapingvoid… 28 minutes ago from web in reply to nowsourcing

SilentJay74 @nowsourcing you talking to me? 29 minutes ago from web in reply to nowsourcing

gideonshalwick @mayobrains - gutsy survey, but i love it! @jtunkelo and i have been talking about the virtues of twitter for the last year! http://web20marketinglive.com 1 minute ago from im in reply to mayobrains

melaniephung @mayobrains I still have no earthly idea. There’s something about the constant updates that just sucks me in. half a minute ago from web in reply to mayobrains

hyperlinked @mayobrains Although I didn’t mock, I didn’t see the point. Did it: My friends joined, I met new people, got recent news updates. 3 minutes ago from twitterrific in reply to mayobrains

UtahSEOpro @mayobrains the fact that everyone else uses Twitter too. if it had a lower user-base then i couldn’t communicate as pervasively 2 minutes ago from TwitterFox in reply to mayobrains

What outrageously great things have you seen on Twitter this week?

Photo by Mia Mia

Everyone measures the success of their blog in different ways - but when it comes to measuring engagement, comments and trackbacks are what really count. Granted there are other ways of measuring engagement, such as Sphinns or Diggs - but let’s be narrow minded for a moment

Seth Godin pointed out “Your readers care about someone’s opinion even more than yours… their own.” For those of you with a quiet blog - it sure doesn’t seem that way, does it?

However, it is very interesting to note that Seth has comments turned off for his blog. Yet as I write this, just one day after the aforementioned post was published, there are already 3 trackbacks. Is this a purposeful strategy to get more links, or just a way to save time on comment moderation?

Common Tactics for Comment Overload

I think Seth would get overrun with comments if he left the possibility open, because if you look at all the blogs with rampant comments, they have certain elements in common.

• Each blog post is fairly short, between 200 and 500 words with just one major point or theme.
• They leave room for comment by covering only one aspect or not sounding like a factual know-it-all with all the answers.
• They ask questions or even ask for comments.
• The blog has several hundred regular readers, at least.

That last point can be a bit deceiving upon first glance though. I’m not saying you must have several hundred readers in order to get comments - I’m saying your content has to be the kind that will get the attention of several hundred regular readers.

Not That Simple

I know I’m missing something though. Maki, Kathy Sierra, and Skellie consistently have massive amounts of comments - and yet they seem to break all the rules. All their posts are long, matter of fact, and don’t ask questions… but they do have a few thousand readers.

Their strategies are a little different. Maki is a “tell all” kind of guy - like ‘here is absolutely everything you ever needed to know about the topic.’ Kathy and Skellie use graphs and pithy pictures to say a thousand words - which might mean it’s a little more than OK to be long winded, so long as you make pretty pictures too.

They are a very special exception though, because I’ve seen many similar blogs - very informative, long, thorough posts with a personalized feel, pretty pictures, and thousands of readers - but don’t get this kind of comment overload.

I won’t name names, but a site I am extremely familiar with gets massive amounts of traffic, but maybe only 3 to 5 comments on any given post. The format and style are almost exactly the same, but there is one important element missing.

The Welcome Mat

Maki, Kathy, and Skellie talk to you. Blogger X tells and sells you. Maki, Kathy, and Skellie make a concerted effort to solve your problem. Blogger X tries to solve a problem. Both are just as useful, but the former is decidedly more engaging.

It’s a very fine line between “talking to” and “telling” though, and I would imagine this fine line would be very easy to cross if you don’t start on the right foot. I think it all boils down to your mindset.

So how do you approach writing a blog to get comments? What is that one centric thought that keeps you focused on starting a conversation?

Technorati means business with Wordpress Blogs, and rightfully so. With all the potential vulnerabilities of older, unpatched versions of Wordpress out there, many blogs have become fair game to spammers worldwide.

If you have not upgraded Wordpress since 2.3.2, and have a claimed blog on Technorati, you probably received an email from Technorati architect Ian Kallen, who writes:

“…Blogs that have been compromised by this security vulnerability are typified by having links to spam destinations inserted onto the blog page. These link insertions may be invisible to casual observations; the links are often obscured by style attributes that render them invisible. These links are still seen by crawlers such as Technorati’s, Google’s and Yahoo’s. You can find these links by viewing the source of the blog pages or, when using Firefox, looking under “Tools” -> “Page Info” -> “Links”. Blogs hosted on wordpress.com are not affected by this issue; only blogs hosted on their own installations of WordPress from wordpress.org require concern…”

The NowSourcing blog was a couple versions back and noticed a couple spam links creeping up here, so we bit the bullet and upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. For those of you that have not done so yet, be sure to at least be on 2.3.3.

The Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin was surprisingly bump-free (be sure to check all the backup files, we noticed that the wp-content folder didn’t backup automatically).

Technorati has often been criticized of not being on top of things, but this time around I must say good job, Ian and crew! Granted that many will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off

Before you say “hey, you write about social media. Where’s the social media?” I was just getting to that Technorati authority and blog search coupled with Wordpress blogging is at the heart of social media. If you woke up tomorrow and your or your client’s blog was dropped by Technorati, there could be some serious ramifications. Conversation is quickly becoming the new form of metrics in social media (sorry pageviews), and without a guide like Technorati, we’d be up a creek without a paddle.

But what if Technorati removed thousands of authority blogs en masse? Best upgrade soon, all!

This is a slightly different approach the the Overheard on Twitter - let us know what you think. The last few brought up the concept of branding, and this time we wanted to take a look at brand theft.

Photo by Jef Bettens

You have worked very hard to develop a brand that conveys not just what you do, but for whom you want to do it. Your brand is you, it’s personal, it’s your special baby.

Then, just as you become popular - they take all your hard work, and make it their own.

They Stole Your Content

As if spam comments weren’t bad enough, now some people see fit to just outright steal your content by scraping your RSS feed and republishing it.

@QueenofSpain fought back by asking Are You Reading This on BlogNetNews.com?

Well, it turns out BlogNetNews really is trying to run an honorable site.

“It is alleged that BNN does not link back to your blog. This is, bluntly, FALSE. It does link back. If you click on the title of your post, it redirects to your site. If you click on the name of your blog, it brings you to another BNN page that shows blurbs of your blog’s most current posts. Click on one and it takes you to your blog.” - Nolanotes

There are ways of preventing content theft:

pchere Stop RSS Feed Scraping with AntiLeech WordPress Plugin http://tinyurl.com/38anns 11:24 PM March 27, 2008 from twitterfeed
.

They Hijacked Your Profile

There’s a new kind of identity thief in town - are your profile doors locked and secure?

samharrelson I’m a MySpace spammer: http://tinyurl.com/yrpxyt 07:40 PM January 28, 2008 from twitterrific
.

mayobrains @samharrelson It’s really unfortunate that it is so hard to control one’s image on those sites, especially where it’s so imperative for pros 07:46 PM January 28, 2008 from web in reply to samharrelson

samharrelson @mayobrains No doubt. Personality hijacking (in a prof sense) should be criminal when it comes to social networks. 07:48 PM January 28, 2008 from twitterrific in reply to mayobrains

They Snatched Your Domain

From an earlier interview with Todd Mintz:

To most domainers, domains are “online real estate” and domaining is the practice of investing in “online real estate” with the expectation of earning a nice ROI. Now, there are rules that honest domainers must follow and one such rule is not to violate somebody’s trademark in any domain that is registered.

Deliberate cybersquatting is clearly wrong…however, the great majority of domain purchasers don’t know much about trademark rules nor do they know the penalties for violating them. Instances like the one involving The Simpsons Movie occur mostly out of ignorance and such people, even if their intent was to profit from their actions, must be separated from the “professional rogues” in the industry.

There are literally hundreds upon thousands of people who have been victim to domain theft in one form or another. Just last year Wiki.com was caught in a mix up, and in three years “cybersquatting” has increased almost 50%.

The only way you can prevent this from happening to you is by keeping up with all the new tricks they’re using to steal your domain.

Why?!

If you haven’t taken the time to develop your brand yet, realize this simple fact - something is only worth being stolen if it is valuable. Your brand holds an immeasurable amount of potential.

Go ahead - build a brand worth stealing!