Social media marketing | Liz Hover's Diary of a Web Gal

I regularly give presentations about using social media.

I talk about making your Twitter, Facebook page or blog a go-to place for useful information.

Smarty pants blogger Martyn Chamberlin, writing a guest post on ProBlogger, has perfectly summed up what I’m getting at.

In Teach or your blog will die, Martyn tells us: ‘Nobody cares who you are, but they love to surf the Internet and learn things. If you’re giving away useful content that creates value for others, they’ll start showing interest in you.’

Head over to ProBlogger to read the full article. And then subscribe to Martyn’s blog Two Hour Blogger to keep reading more of Martyn’s great advice.

I love email. And so I religiously read everything that arrives in my inbox. This includes over 20 email subscriptions from technology, web design, blogging, social media and marketing websites.

I couldn’t do my job without a lot of the information that comes my way.

One of the requirements of website management is the need to continuously nuture your knowledge base. I find these email updates are one of the best ways to stay in the loop.

So I get some of these sent to my personal email address and others go to my work account. If you’re trying to absorb this much information you’ll need to be pretty organised about how and when you read the updates.

Of course email alerts don’t work for everyone. And most if not all of the sites I list below also offer other ways to subscribe. Or you could just regularly visit these sites. But that’s a heck of a job.

Here are my picks in no particular order:

• One Degree – the inside scoop on digital marketing and social media for Canadian marketers.
• ProBlogger – created by uber blogger Darren Rowse, the site is dedicated to helping other bloggers learn the skills of blogging, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium. Includes well over 3,500 articles, tips, tutorials and case studies.
• TwiTip – also from Darren Rowse, a tips site for Twitter users who want to improve their use of Twitter.
• Skidzopedia – a blog offering updates about the latests gadgets, softwares, news and reviews.
• MediaShift - tracks how new media – from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism – are changing society and culture.
• VentureBeat – Silicon Valley news about tech money and innovation.
• Mashable – the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on web 2.0 and social networking news.
• MediaPost – resources for media, marketing and advertising professionals offering news coverage, event information, a social network, and industry jobs, directories and research. Folks can subscribe to updates from over 20 blogs.
• Media in Canada – the latest news keeping media and marketing execs up to speed on the Canadian media scene.
• Micro Persuasion – a blog exploring how emerging technologies are revolutionizing marketing and communications.
• Silicon Alley Insider – news, commentary, and discussion about digital publishing, entertainment, news, music, social networking, mobile, and gaming.
• All Facebook – the unofficial Facebook blog.
• Seth Godin – Seth has several sites. I currently subscribe to Seth Godin’s Blog which offers riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.
• John Battelle’s Searchblog – thoughs on the intersection of search, media, technology and more.
• MakeUseOf – news about cool websites, software, and how-to articles.
• NETTUTS – a site aimed at web developers and designers offering tutorials and articles on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you design and build websites.
• Six Revisions – a blog that shares useful information about web development and design, dedicated to people who build websites.
• ZDNet – technology news and reviews.
• Blogging Me, Blogging You – marketing, blogging, social media, PR and technology news.
• TechCrunch – a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.
• Daily Blog Tips – erm, I think the title speaks for itself.
• Web Design Ledger – written by web designers for web designers. Web design related knowledge and resources. Topics range from design inspiration to tips and tutorials.
• ReadWriteWeb – a blog that provides web technology news, reviews and analysis.
• Smashing Magazine – trends and techniques in web development. They don’t provide email updates so I follow them on Twitter.
• The Web Squeeze – web design articles on business and computers to web development tutorials on topics such as CSS, PHP and Javascript.
• PR 2.0 – Brian Solis’ blog covering marketing and technology.
• Blogsessive – blogging tips for bloggers.
• Six Pixels of Separation – fellow Canadian Mitch Joel blogs about marketing and communications. No email updates so I check this site manually when I remember.

One of my favourite bloggers is Darren Rowse of ProBlogger – if you need to know anything about blogging, head for ProBlogger.

Darren posted something short and sweet this morning and I think we should all listen.

We can fuss all we like about social media. But the best way to learn about blogging is to actually DO IT. Make mistakes. It’s ok. But don’t be over cautious at the expense of your growth.

Blimey I’m a bad blogger. I get email updates everyday from sites like ProBlogger and Daily Blog Tips. I would get a slapped wrist from them for being so lazy with my updates.

We’re due to soft-launch our new website in just a few days. Gulp.

The test site is looking good with still a few tweaks to be made. I’ve been busy trouble-shooting a bunch of things in anticipation of said launch.

Today I worked out how to record voicemail messages on to my computer using Skype and Pamela. The Pamela files get saved as MP3s into a folder on my hard drive so I can open the file and edit it. Horrah! And all for the cost of a cheap phone call on Skype. The only limitation with the Pamela basic application I downloaded is that I’m limited to 15 minutes of recording per call. Fingers cross no silly bugger leaves us an extra long message cos we’ll be screwed.

And as a result of this, I also set up our podcast hotline which allows listeners to record a comment about the podcast. I hope to use some of these in future podcasts.

My editor and reporter are working on some of the video interviews tonight.

We’ve more or less finished the audio interviews. I’m just waiting for the final few from my editor. I ended up recording the general intro and outro for all podcasts myself. I had asked my husband but he’s up to his eye-balls in his own work chaos so to save time I did it. As I previously mentioned, I’m no silky-voiced diva but I think it will work out just fine for now. The intro and outro top and tail all the audio interviews that appear on our website.

Our website folks have been working on the never-ending report that I lovingly prepared for them. There have been design changes and revisions to the way the CMS works. It’s a long road but I believe we close to the end of this part.

I’ve also been preparing information my bloggers. I’ve put together a kind of ‘Promoting your blog 101′ document which will help them get the word out about their blog on our website.

Tomorrow I should be testing the test site again! I’ve also got to move a bunch of content across to the new site. And then we’re just days away from our soft-launch. I’ve written a – heck, I don’t know what you’d call it – it’s not a news release but more of an info bulletin for our soft-launch audience telling them what we’ve been doing with the website and what we’d like them to do now they have their eyeballs exclusively on the site.

It’s all about feedback.