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

I’ve been reading The Anti-Social Media blog for little while now but today I reached a milestone.

I am officially declaring it as my most favourite blog. Ever.

This is the post responsible: The 4 Stages When You Have Nothing To Blog About.

Sometimes I get a bit bored reading social media marketing advice from so-called ‘experts.’ Jay Dolan, the writer behind the blog, tells it like it is.

You should watch this video below featuring Jay. It’s pretty obvious why his blog is so funny. He’s one smart cookie.

I’m sure there are lots of parallels to be drawn with the emergence of the social media movement but I thought this one was particularly apt. And very well put together.

I found it on Jeff Esposito‘s website.

My colleague pointed me to this video about social media measurement.

And, if you have an hour to spare, it’s well worth watching.

I’d never heard of Katie Paine and I read extensively so I’m not sure why she’s never come across my radar before.

From Social Media Breakfast Seattle on YouTube: Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners, the acclaimed Queen of Measurement … explains why measuring social media is not about impressions or eyeballs but rather listening, engaging, and thinking like the customer. Instead of the platitudes on joining the conversation, measurement is about gauging the bottom line impact of these social conversations.

I’m at it again.

I’ll be doing two social media workshops in Winnipeg very soon. I love this stuff and hope to see you there.

- April 8, The Delta Winnipeg – International Association of Business Communicators / IABC (Manitoba chapter). Full details in the link.

- April 13, Aqua Books – Winnipeg Girl Geek Dinners (email me if you’re coming).  I’ll be co-presenting this one with my pal Polly Washburn.

I’ll be giving practical examples of social media that you can put into practice immediately (or email me if you’re stuck). I hate jargon; fluff; nonsense. I like getting to the point.

In January, I delivered three lunchtime workshops – open to the public – on the topic of social media.

These were presented by my employer, the National Screen Institute – Canada (NSI) – a film and television training school based in Manitoba.

We’ve put together a highlights video showing the best bits from the sessions.

I cover a bunch of things beginning with my definition of social media. I talk about the importance of genuine communication online and why you would even bother to spend so much time working on all these social networking sites.

Credits: Four ways social media is changing business information from Mashable; Outposts graphic from ProBlogger.

Over at Mashable, writer Adam Ostrow asks if social media is making corporate websites irrelevant.

Remember the dotcom era?

Websites were the thing. And then it all went arse up.

Adam wonders if corporate websites are still useful today with the rapid growth of spaces such as Facebook and Twitter. More and more brands are using those sites to market their products and push their message. Should we even bother with a website?

Let’s look at it another way.

Corporate websites need to do much more to pull in functions from social media sites that add value to their own online space. A company always needs a home base. It’s where you can find all the bits. This is such an exciting time in website and marketing development. Companies should be clawing at API (application programming interface – that’s the thing that lets you and and me build stuff on our websites using bits of Facebook or Twitter or myriad other cool social media sites.)

One problem with the social web is the fragmentation of everything. At some future point we’re probably gonna want to reign things back in. Just a little. API and our corporate websites are where we’ll do it. Sure, corporate websites will go through some transformation along the way but ultimately we’ll want a tidy place where we can find all the parts without going all over to find them.

A website is still key to your brand and probably always will be. Your portfolio of online space will get bigger but ‘the website’ gives it all a home.