Although no world-changing ideas came out of it, I think everyone learned something. For me, it’s that social media is like dough. It is what you make of it. You have the choice to mold it into anything you want with any ingredients you like. How successful you are depends on how much your audience appreciates the outcome – just like your reputation amongst your friends. In a way, social media is a virtual extension of your social network.

Social Media and Corporate Culture

As a PR person, I had a different takeaway. The PR people disagreed with each other on certain points, and I think that’s a good thing. It means there’s diversity in the field, but more importantly it supported one of my suspicions.

Now I’m no social media veteran or expert since I’ve only be actively doing into this stuff for a year. As a newbie, I did notice from various social media blogs, books and events that some social media practitioners have a tendency to share a set of guidelines on social media best practices like being more engaging, being more transparent or being more authentic, for example.

This past year, I’ve learned that social media for companies isn’t just about best practices and emulating what the successful early adopters are doing. It’s about tailoring social media to corporate culture and the brand’s personality. Generating buzz for a health campaign is very different from generating buzz for a service provider. And while some brands could use all the buzz they can find, others are naturally buzz-generating. It’s not possible to expect all brands to be more transparent or more open because these traits may not be part of the corporate personality. Or worse, it may be in direct conflict to the corporate personality. And just because a brand’s not open doesn’t mean their doing bad job in the social media space. Think Apple, for example.

Social media is simply another social sphere for companies and individuals to establish their reputation in – so complementing a company’s social media actions with its personality is probably more effective than blindly following a set of best practices.

The Rise and Fall of the Bloggers’ Voice

As a blogger, this growing trend of blog monetization concerns me. I’m not talking about the bloggers who balance their original content with paid content – especially when they are endorsing brands they care about. Getting paid for one’s passion should be celebrated.

I’m talking about bloggers who make it their sole goal to be paid for blogging, and pander to every brand willing to pay them out there. At that point, they are compromising their credibility and integrity for money. Let me put this in another way:

Is your credibility only worth $200?

Okay, granted $200 is a lot of money for certain people. Or perhaps money is more important to them than airy virtues like honesty, credibility and integrity. But for me, these abstract virtues are far more important.

Here’s why: I started out blogging before the word “blogging” was invented. I kept a journal on a Geocities site back in 1996, where every entry had to be painstakingly coded in HTML. Prior to the Internet, only large organizations, newspapers and authors good enough to be published had voices. The fact that the ordinary man could have a voice was revolutionary.

And now, to be paid by these same organizations to compromise our voice seems like we’re going one step backwards.

So this is how I shaped my dough. I started out blogging because I can – and I don’t think I’ve strayed far.

How have you molded your dough?

Related posts:

1. The Wonders of Social Media
2. Life of a Social Media Rockstar
3. Blogger Business Cards

I know I did! It was probably one of the best new years ever – thanks to the wonders of social media.

It all started with a tweet a couple days back from Derrick, a guy I don’t know then, of which a mutual friend, Jerrick re-tweeted (for it to show up on my timeline). It read:

Hey, all you tweeples in Singapore. What do you think about having a NYE countdown party/event?

I’m usually not a spontaneous person, but that tweet just sparked something in me and I confidently replied, “Great idea!”

That snowballed into a Twivite with its own hashtag – and we each broadcasted to our list of Twitter followers.

Come new years eve, and we decided meet at Arab Street but didn’t really have an agenda planned out. We just went with the flow. The flow ended up bringing in 15 tweeple to Hackerspace (which deserves an entry of its own). And I had such an amazing, amazing time. Met new friends, old friends. Shared stories, ideas and YouTube videos. Sang, danced, ate, partied.

It was just an unforgettable night of great ideas, great conversation with great company.

Thanks to Hisham for the video!

And it all started with one tweet, from a guy I didn’t know.

This, my friends, is one of the wonders of social media.

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1. Life of a Social Media Rockstar
2. Christmas Update!

Front of the Nanyate?! business card

Back of the Nanyate?! business card

Why would bloggers need business cards?!

For me, I attend quite a few local social media events not only as a corporate representative, but also as a blogger. However, handing out my corporate card instantly brands me as a corporate representative. So people find it difficult to reconcile between Ivy the blogger and Ivy the corporate communications executive from that telco with the iPhone. And of course, it doesn’t help that my blog’s name is unpronounciable to most. (It’s NAAN-YAH-TAY, people.) So a blogger card is exactly what I need to let people know that I too am a blogger.

As for you? I suggest you read Claudia’s entry on why bloggers should have name cards, ’cause I can’t top that entry.

Get your own Nanyate?! business card!

For those of you who live in Singapore, you can get one at the next social media event or we could just meet up for coffee. For those of you who live in the rest of the world, just e-mail me your mailing address!

Dear Readers, do you think bloggers need business cards? Do you think you need business cards? Why or why not?

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1. Christmas Cards

It’s become so easy to post my opinions and internet finds with 140 characters that writing 400 worded posts has come to be too cumbersome to write. It’s become so easy to hear what others have to say in 140 characters, that reading a 400 worded post has come to be too cumbersome to read.

So sometimes, I wonder this extreme speed in information exchange is that great for us.

Why Twitter is Great

One one hand, this speed allows us to:

Spread vital info virally

Can you imagine how useful this would be in times of disasters? We no longer have to wait for CNN for the latest war or natural disaster. A quick glance at the Twitter Trends, or your followers’ tweets would show you that world’s headlines of the day. You’ll likely even be able to some first hand accounts.

Create a sphere of influence in no time

Anyone who has been around the blogging world long enough would understand how much time and effort is needed to create the clout and credibility needed to be seen as a influential source of (niche) information. With Twitter, all you need is to seek out the best information written by established bloggers and then tweet the links – and ta-da! You’ll have instant clout and influence.

Network with like-minded individuals like a social butterfly

Relationships between bloggers tend to take a long time to establish. How many comments must you leave, how many emails must you send, to “feel” that you have remotely established some ties with a fellow blogger? With Tweep “Twitter People”, the connection is almost instantaneous. All it takes is a few RTs “re-tweets”, @ replies and D “direct messages” for you to take notice of or be noticed by a fellow Tweep.

Why Twitter is Evil

On the other hand, I sometimes feel that all this speed and effortless dissemination of information contribute to a sort of degeneration of the internet. (Or the human mind perhaps?)

Lack of depth, dying breed of expertise

There is only so much you can say with 140 characters. The information you spread or read can’t possibly be as insightful as a blog entry or a journal article. In short, information gets watered down. Misunderstandings could occur. People would spend less time reading into certain topics, because there’s just so much going on around them.

Yes, short is sweet, but at the end of the day, we still need our niche experts. If everyone jumps on the Twitter bandwagon, we serve to lose the experts or potential experts who could’ve shared their wealth of information on a 1000 worded blog post.

Forgotten accountability

When you can express yourself in less than 10 seconds, you would often forget to think about the consequences of your messages.

My blog entries typically take a few hours to write. I would write a draft, review it, do a quick grammar and spell check. In those hours, I would have definitely considered the consequences of my messages.
Would my audience stand to gain anything from my post? Would any few group my particularly offended?

Yet, with my Tweets I admit that I often write on impulse. Out of frustration or anger, I have said a few things that could’ve and would’ve stepped on more than a few toes.

Decreased productivity

I only follow around 100+ people, and I’m already quite inundated by their tweets. I get almost 200 tweets per day; and I actually read every single one of them.. Talk about OCD. By time I read, RT, @reply to everything interesting, I realized I lost so much precious time and energy that could’ve been used for writing a helpful blog entry, replying to email or commenting on more blogs.

With that said, I still love the instant-ness of Twitter. It allows someone with a busy schedule like me to still have a voice on the internet. At the same time, I feel that I’ve lost a lot of substance, while perpetually writing and reading at this pace. There’s just not enough time to process and digest all the info.

I just feel that I might’ve grown dumber at the rate information is circulating around me.

What do you think about Twitter? How do you use Twitter? Do you feel that it has taken a lot of time away? Do you feel you put less thought into your messages with Twitter? Do you think Twitter is making you dumber?

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And here is how Nexus graphed my social network:

Clusters Based On Stage of Life

While there is a discussion here on whether friendship is primarily bound by geography or shared interests, my graph shows that it’s neither. My social networks seem to be based on the stages of my life. Well, that’s kind of obvious to me because that’s exactly how I organize my friends mentally and on my MSN account. I always group my friends according to when I meet them, and who I met them through.

Clusters Reflect Culture

However, what I did find particularly interesting is that the clusters reflect each network’s culture. The more clustered the network, the more conducive the network’s culture is for people to be closer. And all this has little to do with the size of the network. Take my Singaporean high school and Indonesian middle school for instance. Both schools were obscenely large. But my high school in Singapore had no system to ensure people from the same grade would know each other. We didn’t necessarily take classes with people from the same grade, and everyone just shared the cafeteria. So friendships were formed purely by interests. The blonde cheerleaders would sit together during lunch. The rich Asian girls would hang together after school. The British outcasts would aimlessly roam around the libraries. And of course, there would be no reason for the rich Asian girls to talk to the outcasts. And all that is reflected in my Facebook clusters since the network is a lot less dense than the one in Indonesia, where there were designated areas for each grade level – and everybody just knew everybody.

Clusters Reflect Inter-network Connections

And for the observant, you would’ve noticed that there are very strong connections amongst my networks, despite the geographic differences – especially amongst my high schools and middle school. No surprise, actually. They were all part of the same interscholastic association that allowed the schools to compete with each other in sports, forensics and music every quarter. So everybody knew everybody. And these people, mostly nomadic like me, spread across the world like a bunch of dandelion seeds to germinate universities. So, no surprise that there are links from school to university as well.

Limitations: Doesn’t Determine Who I’m Close To

With that said, that’s all Nexus is good for. It doesn’t quite track who I’m close to maybe because I have almost 900 friends on Facebook. But perhaps it’s because, as a nomad, who I’m emotionally close to is not necessarily who I’m geographically close to or who I share lots of interests with. I have extremely diverse interests, so I have hardcore party poopers and social hermits as close friends. Come to think of it, I share very little common interests with my best friends. And we don’t even live in the same countries for goodness’ sakes. But I deeply care for these people, as I would for my own family. So I know my close friends aren’t primarily determined by what they do and what they like, but more by how they think and how we get along.

And Nexus can’t possibly show that kind of dynamic.

How do you organize your friends? And does Nexus depict how close you are to your friends or how close your friends are to each other?

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I’ve been seeing an increase in blogs on hiatus, and as a result, a decrease in the amount of quality visitors lately. In an effort to expand my blog circle, I gave blog networking a try. So, I thought I’d write a review for a few of the blogging networks I belong to, as well as some important tips to ensure blog networking success.

Entrecard vs. MyBlogLog vs. Blog Catalog

Entrecard is great for increasing hits, but not so great for increasing comments and blog buddies because of its inherent design. Entrecard users are supposed to ‘drop’ their card (their blog’s ad) on another Entrecard user’s blog. After it’s dropped, the owner of the blog will view card on their dashboard, and reciprocate, if they are interested. Dropping cards, among various other ways, will allow the user to gain Entrecard credits, to be used as currency to buy ads on other blogs. The more the user actively participates in Entrecard, the more expensive the ad space on his blog is, the more he will gain from ads. As such, not many will bother to comment. This also means that there are many low-quality blogs, who are out there just to generate hits for the sake of PayPerPost and other paid blogging programs. The search for high-quality blogs is a very arduous process. But if all you want is to increase hits, this may be one of the most efficient networks out there.

Honestly, I haven’t spent much time on MyBlogLog, mainly because I’m not a fan of its interface. However, I found it very useful for tracking visitors. I’ve been able to put names and faces on who visits my blog without looking through IP addresses on my hit counters. I’ve also been able to do the same to MyBlogLog friends, and have been able to find some real offline friends and their blogs in the process. I feel like a CIA agent when I’m on MyBlogLog. LOL! But then again, of course, the reverse also holds true. That means others are able to track my web surfing habits if they look around MyBlogLog.

Of all three, BlogCatalog is the best at doing what it’s supposed to i.e. network bloggers. I have met many of my subscribers and blog buddies from Blog Catalog. And I can vouch for the number of great blogs on the network. It’s one of the best places to check out blogs from every niche and meet people from every creed. And it is all thanks to the infrastructure of the network. On BlogCatalog, each blog page has a rating, a rank, a review section and a ‘Similar Blogs’ section. The owners’ page allows for a short biography, a ‘Shout’ section meant to be something like a Facebook Wall, amongst other network-friendly sections. There is also a discussion board and a groups section for users to hang out and mutually profit from. There’s no point system or crappy interface to misguide you. So, people who sincerely and actively participate earn their share of blog buddies and subscribers. The more you participate, the more often you blog, the higher-quality your blog is, the more your blog rank increases. Blog rank starts with 0 (worst) to 100 (best). FYI, Nanyate?! ranks a whopping 75.7! So, low-quality and spammers get weeded out in the process, and have their blogs stuffed right to the back of the directory.

The Key to Blog Networking Success

Whether you’d like to increase visits, comments or blog buddies, there is a recipe for being successful – and a very simple one at that. All you need is active participation. Search the directory. Seek out new blogs that you are genuinely interested in. Comment on them. Leave a shout. Add them as a friend. Subscribe to their entries. And I will guarantee an increase in your comments, visitors, rank and blog buddies. By becoming a member and simply listing your site, you gain absolutely nothing. Okay, maybe just a few visits.

The amount of effort you put in is directly proportional to your returns. Case in point: of all three networks, I spend the most time at BlogCatalog. That resulted in around 10 blog buddies, a handful subscribers and many links exchanged. I’ve also managed to expand my readership far beyond personal bloggers. MyBlogLog is where I spend the least amount of time at, I’ve only managed to find one long lost friend. As for Entrecard, I’m still quite new at it. So, there aren’t any notable returns as of yet.

What do you think of blog networking? Have you tried it? If so, what networks do you belong to? Which ones do you like best?

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Having owned a site from the world of Geocities back in 1996, and many frequent hiatuses, the world of Web 2.0 is, for the most part, still quite alien to me. I don’t fully understand the sleuth of social bookmarking sites or the function of Google pageranks (other than the fact that it drives traffic). I have slowly transformed my site to work according to certain Web 2.0 standards such as code validation, ensuring that they are 508 compliant – a standard to assure those with disabilities, particularly the blind, can access my site like everybody else.

Regardless of Web 2.0 standards, I measure Nanyate’s success by delving deep into my Statcounter. While most people only look at their unique visitor count, pageviews, and referrals, I find that miscellaneous statistical information can provide key information for blogger-designers like me (and, I presume, most of you too!). For example:

• Visitor Length – Reflection of your content and design quality

  For me, this is by far the most important number because how long your visitors stay on your site reflects on the quality of your blog content and to a lesser extent, how aesthetically and functionally pleasing your site is. By aesthetics, I don’t mean designing the site with the caliber of NDesign Studio, but just one that I can view without getting a migraine from flashy ads and horrendously tiny text.

  

  My visitor length averages at approximately 4 minutes. Since my blog is a niche blog, mainly appreciated by women and personal blogger-designers, having 50% of my visitors stay on my blog for more than 30 seconds is considered pretty good. I don’t quite understand the 20% of visitors that stay on my site for an hour. But I’m grateful. You must really love my site – more than I do!

• Returning Visits and Feed Subscribers – Barometer of content quality

  Having returning visitors is a sign that your blog is producing original content, and generating interests among others. Unlike visitor length, the percentage is not as important as the actual count. Out of 200 visitors, I have around 50 returning visits and an average of 30 feed subscribers (including comment feed). It means my blog could do better to target more people and expand its niche. But for an almost 4-month old blog, I think it’s not too bad.

  

• Browser – Accessible coding for all

  There are so many designers out their fighting about whether to design for Firefox or IE. A simple look at your statistics can show who you should cater for. For me, out of 500 people, 350 Firefox, 100 use IE and 50 uses Safari. The answer? If you want returning visits or make it into design galleries, design for all of them.

• System Stats – Accessible design for the masses

  Like the browser problem, many people condemn designers for leaving 800×600 resolutions behind. But here is the hard cold facts from my Statcounter: 300 visits from 1280×1024 resolution, 100 visits from 1024×768, 10 from 1152×864 and a measly 5 from 800×600. Do you mean I should jeopardize the ease for 400+ people who have bigger resolutions for the 5 who have 800×600? Of course, I can design sites that have expandable divs, but I don’t think it’s worth the trouble as I’m unwilling to forgo the ‘personal’ part of my personal blog for minor increase in accessibility. (But of course, you may beg to differ.) Besides, with the advent of feeds, they can ignore my inaccessible design for my content, if they wish so.

I’m not sure how you guys analyze your statistics but I hope I have enlightened a few people. And like I said, I’m not Web 2.0 savvy, so…

…do share your views on how you analyze statistics!

FYI, I am using the free version of Statcounter that can only view the latest 500 visitors’ in-depth stats, which can skew my analysis. Also, I blocked my IP, so statistics provided here do not include my own visits to prevent any further distortions.

P.S. A major update, WordPress 2.5 is planned to be released tomorrow, so be sure to standby for the annoying yellow reminder. I guess not. Regardless, I’m psyched! Can’t wait. The Dashboard looks amazing and is AJAXed out!

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