OPEN

The first two of these 4 videos from Seth Godin – about blogging and social networking – are right on the money…

On blogging: “Blogging is free. it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the meta-cognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself to your few employees or the cat or whoeevr is going to read it.”

Martin Well (The Ed Techie) writing a guest blog post on establishing an online identity of you are a home worker:

“I used to work on campus 5 days a week, but working at home more has coincided with the advent of blogs and twitter. My professional and personal profile on campus is now much higher than it was when I attended every day, but largely sat in my office, and occasionally ventured out for coffee. I have contact across many different units which are both professionally useful, but also more social and personal than they were previously. I am sure being a homeworker has meant that I have worked harder at establishing this online identity.”

Ed Techie ends up wth six social media principles, which are pure gold:

” 1. <embed> is the universal acid of the web – we should build around it.
2. Simple with reach trumps complex with small audience.
3. Sharing is a motivation to participation – so make it easy and rewarding to do.
4. Start simple and let others build on top
5. Providing limitations frames input (Cf twitter, 12seconds, etc)
6. Complexity resides in the network not the application”

Comment management system. Comes highly recommended…

“Disqus is a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites.

“In minutes, connect your community with those of thousands of other websites.”

Umair on the economic fool’s good of charging for newspaper content:

“Profitability can’t be recaptured from a commodity. Newspapers used to be yesterday’s most profitable industry. Warren Buffett made his fortune by investing in newspapers, yesterday. Yet, today, business model innovation, aka “monetization,” is the surest, quickest path to self-destruction. Charging once more for the same old “content” — as argued for by David Simon, in an impassioned CJR article — will inevitably lead newspapers exactly where it led banks investment “banks” and automakers: into economic implosion.’

Moderation is a form of curation rather than damage control. I like this post about how newspapers should get better at doing that:

“In my post the other day, I said that authors need to tend to their comment threads. I still feel that way, but at scale, Krugman scale, they need help. Some of that help can come from interns and entry level employees who can wade through all of the comments using a moderation tool like the one Disqus will be rolling out shortly for publishers. The comment system itself should leverage community interaction to surface the best comments. Then the author can get delivered to them the best comments, via email, the web, or some other method, to respond, if they so desire.”

Nice collection of videos and tips for getting started with Twitter.

“In late 2008, MarketingSherpa surveyed social media marketers about the effectiveness of their practices. Large majorities rated social media marketing effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness and improving search rankings and site traffic.”

some great throughts from Johnnie about complexity, following a (linked to) presentation from Dave Snowden.

UK government’s Department for Business Innovation and Skills 20-page document on how to use Twitter plus a blog post from its author. Really excellent stuff on many levels…

“The TED conference has been helping to blow people’s minds for many years now, and that’s in large part because they put videos of many of the TED talks online for anyone to watch, share, and spread for free. But there are a number of other conferences held each year around the world that also bring together visionaries, intellectuals, and luminaries from a wide variety of disciplines to discuss innovative ideas.”