How the good become better
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The new kids
Aug 14th
Madonna did it. So did Britney.
You do not need to go that far.
One interesting thing in the music world is how old artists stay relevant and visible to younger generations and audiences by singing together with new artists. It is good business for the old artists but also for the new faces. Nelly Furtado, Eminem, Rihanna – the success formula is now a standard.
How do you team up with the newcomers in your industry?
A Twitter client that can filter out tweets that have a link
Aug 7th
This would be on my wishlist. Sometimes checking my TweetDeck, I like to see not only what my favorite friends from specific lists (properly organized with a specific column) are talking about, but I want to connect to all of those who I follow.
And, as much as possible, I follow everyone back, except when I see that this can be a robot or someone who is really doing something I am not much interested in. For example, I have not been following anything on politics, sports, religion, cars and general news.
Recently I am considering also to add to my list of things I do not follow the “how to make money online”. Although I do follow (off-Twitter) what Susan Bratton, Eben Pagan, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker and other intelligent people are doing, the simple fact of tweeting about digital marketing attracts followers who, if followed back, have made my “All Friends” column impossible to read.
One of the reasons is that this column is full of SPAM! And I call spam the tweets that are just about a headline of a blog post (of a place they own) and a om.ly, su.pr or bit.ly link.
Hello people.
I understand you need to sell your fish. And that tweeting about your blog content is part of the strategy. But if you are really doing a good work, you do not need to be pushing your RSS to the world on Twitter.
When I think of a great author like Seth Godin, I may think of following him if he has something to say on Twitter. But he does not. Seth has made very clear back in 2008 that Twitter is not his thing. And as the cost of automating was low, he uses it basically as an RSS – http://twitter.com/ThisIsSethsBlog
Now. I am a devoted fan of Seth. I read his books, watch his TED presentations and get the daily article on my RSS feed.
Why the hell should I follow Seth on Twitter?
I do not.
Seth has nothing to say on Twitter. He does not add any value, and that was his choice.
The current Seth profile on Twitter can make sense if you want an easy way to RT his content or if you use Twitter instead of an RSS.
My wild guess is that those who started to follow me (triggering me to follow them back) is that they have the following rationale (they may even call it a strategy):
1. search for people tweeting about digital marketing
2. follow them (if possible, automate/outsource)
3. hope they will follow you back
4. SPAM (automatically RSS your content on Twitter)
5. hope that those who followed you back will read your stuff, and click on the links
A feature on a Twitter client that would ONLY show me the tweets without any pitch (i.e. links) would help me a lot in engaging “the conversation”.
Any recommendation?
What the fuck is my social media strategy?
Aug 4th
It is very funny how common sense gets converted to hype through buzzwords.
One example, from social media marketing, is here: http://whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com/
I wonder how a similar use of this random association of jargon would work for Internet governance talks that seem to repeat hot air time and time again.
The New and the Old
Jul 29th
So I mentioned that I am at the 4th European Summer School on Internet Governance in Meissen, but I simply had no time to blog about it.
But at least I can write this short post: we have some country presentations where participants can talk about their national background and perspectives for the Internet development.
It was mentioned how Estonia is leading the way with eVoting, free public wi-fi in cities and forests across Estonia and how one can pay the parking fee on the street by sending an sms from the mobile.
Instead of enthusiasm, this brought concerns.
Concerns about how citizens can be sure that the government will assure the anonymity of the voting process, etc.
Then it was time for Iceland to showcase the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative for becoming a global haven for freedom of speech.
Instead of enthusiasm, this brought concerns.
Concerns about how it is now a time where global havens (Switzerland, exotic islands) are being pressured by the global community to play the same game as everyone else and how Iceland is just asking for trouble as other countries may not enjoy this.
What are you doing today that will bring concerns instead of enthusiasm?
European Summer School on Internet Governance 2010
Jul 23rd
I’ve been invited to the European Summer School on Internet Governance in Meissen, Germany and hope to share some materials here.
Particularly, from the Programme, I am interested in covering the following themes:
- China and Internet Governance
- Cloud computing, mobile Internet and the Internet of things: challenges of the next generation Internet
- Business and Internet governance
- Internet governance and bridging the digital divide
- Intellectual property and privacy issues in Internet governance
- Internet diplomacy, multistakeholderism and the role of government
- The Internet of the future
- The European Union and Internet governance
- Internet governance challenges of tomorrow
More news soon.
Configuring the Mystique WordPress theme – the Twitter link on the header
Jul 18th
One of the first things that I notice on Mystique is that it is not easy to find how to remove the @Wordpress Twitter from the background header from the default configurations.
So I google around a solution and find this link http://wordpress.org/support/topic/419267
I will give this patch a try and then report on the Comments
Why I am using the WordPress Mystique theme
Jun 16th
So one of the challenges to start blogging is to choose the WordPress theme.
This choice goes beyond the look and feel of design – different structures imply different forms how the interaction happens.
For instance, I enjoy a lot Seth Godin’s blog: it is very clean and goes straight to what matters: his ideas. Tim Ferriss also uses a long column of posts one on top of the other, although with more elements on the header. There are many other examples, and I had even considered some themes that were on the other side of the spectrum, who would add the titles of “recent posts” on a little box on the sidebar. Not good, as it would make the blog more static.
So while I do not make up my mind about the optimal theme for this blog, I though about using the WordPress Defaut but it was too limited. But instead of browsing for long hours until finding my desired Theme, I just did a Google search on “WordPress themes” and downloaded the most popular one, which was Mystique, with 10,990 downloads as in the screen capture below
There are many benefits in this approach. By choosing a Theme that is popular, there are more chances of finding discussions and solutions to customization online than in the case of a less popular – and for me, without programming skills, that is an asset.
It also indicates some crowd wisdom – ten thousand users seem to be a good indication that this is a reliable theme for a first choice without having to do too much research.
Now I just have to do a few tweaks, and so far the Mystique interface seems friendly. Let’s give a try.
The first post
Feb 15th
The first step is always the most difficult one: for a long time I was thinking of starting my blog, but then could not decide on a name. Or a WordPress theme. Who would be my audience. Or what voice should I use. And so on – all the questions that only other bloggers (or bloggers-to-be) understand.
So finally today I able to give my initial ramblings a go. It won’t be perfect, but hope it will be good enough.
Why have I created this blog?
Today, most of my research is on social media and digital marketing. I have also started a business on online information products and will write some of this experience as time allows.
But the blog is not about any of these subjects. It is about a bold statement: “How the good become better”.
I believe that you are good. And want to become even better. That’s it.
Social media is trendy today, and it is one of the ways to achieve the goal of constant improvement. But there are many others, to be explored as time allows.
Let’s see how this experiment will go. I am quite sure it will be interesting.