Digital Biographer™

This article was originally published here at Digital Biographer in January 2008. That’s Eight. A year ago. I think it still is very relevant a year later.

The significance of social networks is now starting to become obvious to the marketing departments of larger companies, largely due to two factors - 1) Traditional advertising channels are proving less and less effective and 2) Marketing and advertising agencies have started to realise where people are spending their time.

They have seen the writing on the wall - with one particular statistic likely to be a challenge for many a marketing manager: “Social networks will become the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns - email has been the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns since the mid 90s, but social networks will overtake it in 2008.”

Another fact that’s staring marketers in the face - a tipping point that only has one further hurdle to clear: “In October 2007, Social Networks accounted for 7.7% of upstream Internet traffic to all other websites, making the category the second most important source of traffic after Search Engines.”

The next hurdle of course is for social networks to become a more important source of traffic than search engines. That’s a whole blog of its own, however.

An article in this morning’s Financial Times is entitled “Business urged to woo social network figures“, and uses language very firmly couched in the tradition of ‘moving product’ and the pages of publications such as ‘Campaign‘. This all suggests to me that although businesses may have woken up, they have not actually smelt the coffee - they still have the urge to sell cereals.
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2.0, brand, conversation 2.0, corporate blogs, search marketing, social media Blog, Business, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, online reputation management, social media

In my post of Top Tweets of 2008, I suggested that as Twitter grows and becomes more widely used and recognised, comments and conversation threads from Twitter will be placed into more and more web sites.

Expanding on that thought, I think there are a number of reasons for this: —

1. More people are using Twitter.
2. People hate logging in to multiple services just to state their opinion.
3. People love to see their own face or mark their territory.
4. Conversation online is becoming more visible, portable and shareable.
5. Using Twitter to make a comment is very fast, by its nature brief (140 characters) and immediate.
6. Twitter users tend to stay logged in to the service continually

I found that there was already a fair amount of discussion and interest appearing online related to the specific issue of Twitter integration into blogs.

WordPress plugins for Tweetbacks and Twitter Avatars

I’ve found a couple of plugins for the popular WordPress blogging platform which this blog uses use, that begin to address these issues: —

1. 
   Twittar - which places Twitter Avatars (also known as mug-shots) in Wordpress comments.

   Cleverly, this plugin also checks (via your email address) to see if the person adding a comment has a ‘Gravatar‘ - and if so, uses this, but otherwise, will use the person’s Twitter avatar. If neither exist, no image is used.

2. 
   Tweetbacks (Beta) - which lists tweets about a specific blog.

   This is still a beta release, and was created very rapidly in response to a blog by Rachel Cuncliffe on Mashable which suggested 10 ways in which blog design would evolve in 2009 to incorporate Twitter. It searches twitter to show tweets which link to a particlar blog. An issue here is that Twitter comments often just report a blog’s existence, but they can also of course be used to give opinion - so it may be more useful as a tool that the blog author sees, but does not necessarily have to share and to hog a blog’s screen real-estate.

So… what if Disqus integrates Twitter?

Now, I’ve been using Disqus to manage comments on this blog for some months. Disqus replaces the default Wordpress comments facility, which is what the plugins above are designed for. I chose Disqus as it allows a wider community than simply those who happen to be looking at this blog to be aware of comments about the blog, plus use of avatars, and the ability to find out more about those who comment, and see other comments from those contributors.

As you can see from the this blog’s sidebar, Disqus ‘socialises‘ commenting - which is one of the big strengths of Twitter, of course. Like Twitter, Disqus recognises that a simple image and a name are valuable currency online, particularly in social media, and making them easier to identify helps build communities.

Disqus already allows the integration of Facebook Connect, so that comments can be made by authenticating your ID from your Facebook account, and has the ability to link to Friendfeed, which aggregates your content from different social media. I think it’d make sense for Disqus to incorporate Twitter into its structure, so that tweetbacks, favourites, comments, and retweets can grow readily, but still maintain the important context of being linked to a particular discussion - and, at the same time, be reproduced, shared, enjoyed and added to elsewhere.

When the conversation becomes portable, it is easier for everyone to be heard.

What’s your view?

2.0, conversation 2.0, microblogging, share, social media Blog, Disqus, FriendFeed, Twitter, Wordpress

Two terms have come to my attention in the last 24 hours. One was “Social Media Management Fees“, the other “Authority Blogging“.

Social Media Management Fees

Yes. The term makes sense, now that I’ve heard it.Mike Coulter of Digital Agency coined the term today, in a thoughtful blog exploring why what should be an invoice item adding significantly to the bottom line of numerous ad agencies, pr companies, digital agencies and general ‘new media’ outfits, isn’t.

I realise I’ve been charging customers Social Media Management Fees (SMMF) since 2006, but only now realised there was such a concise term to describe what I’m charging money for. I always hated ‘online reputation management’ because it always suggested spin and PR, and glossing over things - something I don’t, and won’t do for customers.

Blog Authority / Authority Blogging

I added the term ‘Authority’ to the list of functions for my company Clarocada in 2005. Clarocada Russia, Clarocada Emedia, which is now termed Clarocada Interactive, Clarocada Barcelona, and Clarocada Authority. I initially was aiming to help authors (those with authority, if you follow) to create a voice online, through blogs and social media, and to help them to promote their work to readers, and to perhaps gain other writing assignments.

I’d forgotten, of course, that authors are, in general, a complete pain in the butt to work with. (There are exceptions, but I am not one of them). So I moved more towards offering my services to those in business, who were idea-rich, but time-poor, in order to let them gain ‘Authority’. The term ‘Digital Biographer‘, which I was tentative about using up until it became the headline in a story on the BBC, has always been one that’s not entirely described ‘the full story’. If it’s good enough for BBC News, it’s certainly good enough for me.

I was also interested to note that in May 2007, Technorati coined the term ‘Authority’ to refer to the number of blogs linking to a site in their ‘Technorati Authority’ - so if 193 sites link to you, you have ‘higher authority’ than if, say, 6 sites link to you.

But it was when I read an article referred to by Chris Brogan yesterday, in his Google Reader Share List, where the term “Authority Blogger” was used to describe a service ‘to learn how to use a blog as a way for growing their profile, credibility and influence’. As I looked at the term, I realised this was what I should have called ‘Clarocada Authority’ three years back.

Never mind. A similar phrase did still appear in the description of the service for writers as ‘Blog Authority’.

Calling Names and Bad Language

It’s natural that as a new set of terms and services evolve, language evolves and new terms are created to describe them - some of which dates and is irrelevant very rapidly, and other elements of which becomes common usage. The term ‘new media’ is already looking a bit tired, but it was all the buzz around 2001. By the same token, the term ‘blog’ is far from universally understood even now, in September 2008. And don’t let’s get started on what ‘Web 2.0′ really means…

However, it’s nice to see that a term I’ve used in the past has come to roost in a niche it describes fairly precisely, and that others use the term with essentially the same meaning. As Mike Coulter put it - “I might be on to something.” An accurate way to describe the service I’m asking people to pay for is most definitely an example of good language!

2.0, authority, authors, brand, digital biographer, googlicious, online identity, search marketing, social media, Кибер-биограф 2.0, BBC, Blog, Blogger, digital agency, Google Reader, mike coulter, online reputation management, pr, Public relations, smmf, social media, Technorati, Web 2.0, World Wide Web