The title  of this post, Work Smart: Mastering Your Social Media Life, is the title of a great article by Gina Trapani, of Lifehacker.com fame, that I just read over at Fast Company. I’ve been thinking about putting together an article like this myself. In fact, I was just talking to a co-worker about how I fuse together WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and how I’m looking forward to integrating Google Buzz into the fold.

It’s no simple task coming up with fresh content, doing the postings, cross-posting, etc… and being, basically, a one-man media empire; it takes a heck of a lot of work, and that explains both why so many people start and give up, and why the persistence of doing it is often rewarded with followers, comments, links, etc… in many ways it’s self-regulating. Don’t do it, no love lost… keep it up, and people become interested, you can become a taste maker, or a critical voice.

Having a good social media workflow in place allows you to get more bang for your, content, buck by getting the message to more people right away. So instead of just posting and hoping that something goes viral, or you’ll be found in organic Google searches, you’re taking the message to the people. Some might forward it, some might not read it, some might not care at all, some might really enjoy it, but either way it’s out there, and getting the message out there is what it’s all about. We can only take it that far. After that it’s left to go as far as it can on merit and value alone.

I’m going to post Gina’s video here, as well, because it’s a nice addition to reading the post. Enjoy.

I talk to a lot of people about Twitter. I was a serious non-believer in Twitter, for a long time. I registered an account not long after they opened up shop, and I just didn’t get it. I mean, I got it, but the idea of micro-blogging, and “What are you doing now?” seemed to be creepy and narcissistic, actually I still feel that way, but I have found value in it.

It’s not that I care so much about what somebody just ate for breakfast, or that they’re stuck in traffic, or “so excited for the weekend!” which may have some value among groups of Twitter users, but next to none for the general Twitter pool. However, it’s the quick blurbs of information with links to articles I’m interested in, interviews, and other information that has really pulled me into being a user.

The take away: If you’re looking for articles, information, breaking news and the like, I would say that Twitter has a lot of value. I would also say that if you tweet about your work, your interests, etc… and it caters to the sort of PR and tech folks that are on Twitter then they might get the message, and you might be able to build interest in what you’re doing locally; eventually making real-world, physical contacts.

It used to be that you would find special niche businesses with an exceptional online presence. This was especially true with record labels, niche book publishers, used book sellers, such as Powell’s and a variety of other businesses that found great growth opportunity through the interconnectedness of the Web when they couldn’t find sustainable means in their respective locale. However, things have begun to shift in recent years as energy and sustainability issues have become more and more of an issue.

Scientists, universities, and businesses alike are all investigating sustainable means for producing energy and/or just making less expensive and less environmentally toxic means of transport. However, on all accounts we’re a long way from the energy silver bullet. What’s happened because of this is that local has become the new exotic. As we move towards this emphasis on local goods and services, including locally grown food, locally made goods, local entertainment, stay-cations and the like, small business is faced with huge opportunity on the Web.

Historically only a precious small percentage of small, local, businesses have bothered with the most basic Web presence. The thing is as more and more folks are using iPhones, Blackberries, Twitter, Facebook, and Google to find family restaurants rather than national franchises, and small boutiques over big-box stores, or just trying to find something unique and different in their locale they’re turning to the Web. More and more, I’m telling small business owners and would-be small business owners to get their company online before you worry about the Yellow Pages and the like. Even a basic, professionally done Web presence is better than no Web presence at all, especially if you’re doing something truly local and truly unique to your community.

Interesting article here by Johnny Greenwood, guitarist and keyboardist of Radiohead, claiming an interesting position on Mp3s. This is part of Sasha Frere-Jones  (a writer that I’ve really come to respect and enjoy reading who also has a nice site here.) New Yorker series Dithering.

I have to say that for the most part I agree with Greenwood’s position, and as such this is something that I’ve embraced with my own work. He makes another really interesting point that I’ve heard among my own friends and collectors of audio:

“The downside is that people are encouraged to own far more music than they can ever give their full attention to.”

For myself and my friends this is something that we haven’t really been able to reconcile outside of dedicating a certain amount of time to hearing and experiencing the music outside of the commute and work day… actually making time for leisure listening… which I, personally, find to be real treat.

This press release that the IABC – International Association of Business Communications issued yesterday is very interesting to me. It’s titled: Two Out of Three Communication Professionals Don’t Think Twitter’s Popularity Will Last…

To be sure, this is a bold statement, not because I’m a super Twitter user, though I did crack 100 followers yesterday (not much in the scope of @Oprah or @APlusK (Ashton Kutcher)), but because this statement positions itself to be some kind of pronouncement about Twitter as a communication tool. Twitter, or any other Web/electronic communications vehicle is temporal at best, and subject to the natural evolution that has affected communication methods since the dawn of the Web.

With the Web communication approaches are always changing – Usenet, BBS Systems, and Listservs were improved upon by OneList, eGroups and later Yahoo, Google Groups and AOL Instant Messenger. Yahoo and Alta Vista informed Google, which Google improved on. AOL Instant Messenger laid the ground work for ICQ, and Facebook, or semantically different, but no different really, Twitter and micro-blogging. Live Journal laid the groundwork for blogging and MySpace which laid the ground work for Facebook, and Facebook was informed by Twitter when they integrated a Twitter-esque piece into Facebook, which actually was more reminiscent of AOL Instant Messenger status messages… Anyway, you get the point.

Facebook, if they’re still around in ten years, will be radically different. Twitter, if they’re still around in ten years, will be radically different. This is the evolution of sharing ideas, information and our lives in our community, while the definition of community, and what it means to communicate with that community, continues to change.

The bone that I really have to pick with IABC’s press release is their choice of wording in the title. Many communicators don’t get Twitter especially in the context of business. So in some ways this title, from a leading communications organization creates the appearance that they’ve washed their hands of the value that Twitter could add to communications, and the subtext is that communicators should, too… Maybe that’s unintentional, but from my perspective that’s how it comes off.

I’m assuming that IABC considers themselves to be experts in communications, as it is they’re business and issuing this press release could support this theory to some, but truly, if they were they would understand the history and context of not just Twitter but the history of communicating on the Web in general and fold some of that history, if only a couple paragraphs, into the release. They didn’t, though…

Twitter is a tool, and tools become outmoded and improved upon. Anybody trying to harness the power of these tools needs to recognize their temporal nature. Neither Twitter nor Facebook are here to stay in their current form; if they stayed in their current form they wouldn’t exist at all in ten years… MySpace stuck to their “current form” for too long and they’re foundering because of it, replaced by Facebook; same with Yahoo! who were improved upon so long ago by Google that they’ve become the de facto cautionary tale of why you have to change (Read: evolve) or die.

I participated in an interesting Webinar yesterday called Using Social Media for Disaster Response and Recovery, that was put on by the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America).There were a lot of good points, but one point regarding Web content, particularly in the realm of social media, stuck with me; the idea that people aren’t reading they’re scanning so messages need to be brief and pertinent. This isn’t a particularly new concept, but as I thought about that it dawned on me that I “scan” hundreds of articles every day in my RSS feed aggregater… from that I might read two dozen, and feel obliged to write about one or two, generally… I’ve already started applying this brief/pertinent message piece to my Twitter and Facebook activity with the longer posts showing up here, but I might try working the brief/pertinent angle into this blog more…

Last week Jeremiah Owyang posted a great article talking about free WiFi in hotels, and frankly, I couldn’t agree with him more. Another dimension to this is the car dealer. I’ve been looking at buying a new car for a few months now, and I finally reached that point where I needed to go to the car dealer and start putting together the deal. I had all of my materials set up on my on mobile data center (read: my iBook) and stashed in my bag. I decided that I would have everything set up for reference, CARFAX, Consumer Reports, Loan approvals, Interest rates calculators, etc… I assumed that no car dealer would have free WiFi, thus empowering the customer to have the same resources that they had, on the ready. I was wrong.

As the discussions started, and then the negotiations became heated, I decided it was time to unsheath the mobile data center. I set up on my lap and started citing my numbers and references. The car dealer wasn’t prepared for the prepared customer, so I got a straight deal, as outlined in my Consumer Reports info, which would have been more like me paying sticker had I not been prepared, which is horribly inflated.

Anyway, this is less about my good deal and what it took to get there, and more about how advantageous the Web can be for the customer in historically closed  situations. With ubiquitous and free WiFi (which, slowly but surely, is on its way) and the cheaper netbooks that are hitting the market, all customers can be empowered, thus having the same tools as the folks trying to sell them.

The way business is being done is changing. The old era of pressure, emotional purchases, and psychological games to close the deal is coming to a close (Gelber’s written an interesting book on this dimension here, Horse Trading In the Age of Cars). Where the Web leveled the playing field for communications, it’s also creating an environment of open information to educate consumers… What will open access to information mean for you and your business?

Site Pro News is a great resource, and one that I look at daily. Late last week, I came across a great story on linking and SEO, two things that confuse a lot of folks. So in an attempt to provide value to readers of this blog, as a digital concierge, of sorts, I wanted to add a link to this site. The story is called Links 101 – Puritans, The Puerile & The Pragmatic by Ben Kemp, who also maintains his own blog called The SEO Guy, and as far as I can tell, this is the most brief and definitive discussion on the place of links and SEO I’ve come across. I’ve wanted to take the time to discuss these same things, but when I read Ben’s article, I decided why should I reinvent the wheel, I’ll just repost this article. I highly recommend that anybody interested in linking and SEO, or for those just confused by the whole things, read this story.