O, the shame of it all!

Thursday evening, the Social Media Club Columbia had a roundtable on blogging. I sat there with some kind of facial grimace that I hope resembled a smile, all the while remembering that my last post here was, to put it mildly, ancient.

Does it help at all that I poked around to read the blogs of some of the other participants, only to discover that the majority were as neglected as mine? No. I take no comfort in that at all.

In my goal planning for this year at work, I determined that I should create 48 blog posts over the year. That's not an unreasonable goal for a business blog. So far, I'm on target.

I hate to admit it, but sometimes I'm a much better theoretician than practitioner.

I'd appreciate it if you would skip over to the business blog and read the post I wrote for Clean Out Your Computer Day. It's one of those that writes itself for me.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

I'm No Chatty Cathy

Working in social media is a bit of a paradigm shift for me. The fact is, I'm one of those people who can go a very long time without talking. I worried that my children would not learn how to talk, because no matter how good my intention, I would stop vocalizing. My internal dialogue would be going full steam, however.

I'm not much for small talk; I'm capable, but it's not an enjoyable exercise. One of the primary goals of a social media strategy is to engage people in conversation. Now, one might think that the 140 character tweet could circumvent the small talk issue. Um. No. Not for me.

For example, the pundits advise not merely tweeting the link to an article you've found interesting, illuminating, or otherwise noteworthy, but adding a few words to say why you found it noteworthy. My inner voice says, well, I wouldn't have forwarded it if I didn't find it of interest, now would I? Then I sigh and remind myself that ESP is not an ability shared by very many people, and someone else may not find said article as enthralling. Save the time of the reader, whispers Ranganathan.

It's not that I don't have anything to say: I do. My internal dialogue is very busy, and can be very opinionated. Perhaps I censor that inner voice a little harshly.

By this time, if you've stayed with me this long, and you haven't been living under the rock next to my cave, you might suggest I have the classic symptoms of an introvert. And you would be right.

But here's the paradox. A social media platform can be a wonderful mouthpiece for the clown behind the curtain. "I am the great and powerful Oz!", one could bellow, and no one (except that confounded little dog Toto) would know that the voice comes from someone who dreads the prospect of going to a gathering of more than five and having to exchange small talk.

A Google search for "social media introverts" results in a wealth of hits-- 1.4 million. Who knew there were so many introverts out there expressing themselves through Twitter, blogging, and curating content?

I had one of those Chatty Cathy dolls. The novelty wore off with astonishing speed. It was a small talk nightmare. Those eleven sentences were not at all entertaining after the third or fourth repetition.

And that just might be the cause for my silence.
WoW Librarian

Social Crush Blast

Social Crush exploded in "Famously Hot" Columbia, SC this week. Hundreds of social media practitioners flocked to the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center in anticipation of upping their social media skills. We were not disappointed.

Tim Moore and Ty Downing brought a host of experts with them, including Michael Brito of Edelman Digital, Silicon Valley; Glen Gilmore, Esq., Gilmore Business Network; Victoria Harres of PR Newswire; Skeeter Harris of Mac Village Pro; Kipp Bodner of HubSpot; and Bostjan Spetic and Tin Dizdarevic of Zemanta.

I'm spending the next few days (ahem... weeks) trying out several of the tools I learned about. I've just installed Zemanta, a content enhancement tool that suggests links, tags, images, and further reading for blog posts. Very nice.

One of the key takeaways from Bostjian and Tin's presentation is: The Web is made for linking.

One might think this statement is self-evident. Based on my experience last week while adding some news releases to a website, I think it's not obvious to most news providers. Perhaps they are still thinking in paper press terms. Just cutting and pasting an article from print into a digital format doesn't work for the web. I found myself searching for links to studies cited and to companies referenced in the articles. Not only is it bad web form, it's one of my pet peeves.

Using Zemanta is a great time saver, doing much (but not all) of the footwork for you. I'll keep tweaking it, but I think this tool is going to stay in my toolbox. Oh-- and it's free.

Related articles

• The Next Generation of Social Media - 14th September event (cambsbusiness.wordpress.com)
• Building Better Business Blogs (zemanta.com)
• Smart Business, Social Business (edelmandigital.com)

You can take the girl out of the library...

For the past several weeks, I've been wondering what to do with this blog. Should I change the name? Start a new one? What?

Why? After working in libraries for the past 13 years, I am now working in the private sector, managing a recruitment and staffing firm's social media program. It's a very good fit: the firm specializes in information technology hiring--something I know a thing or two about, from both sides. Developing the social media strategy is challenging (yea!), and keeping abreast of the changes keeps the challenge fresh. And many of the skills I learned as a systems librarian and innovator are transferable.

In other words, I do not anticipate becoming bored any time soon. (This is a good thing; ask my mother.)

As one might suspect, I've been really delving into the world of branding, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. See my post, Swimming in the sea of social media. I remain impressed by the number of people who are interested in sharing what they know. It's almost overwhelming.

A side note: The title of my last post might have been more accurate if I had called it "Trekking across the social media terrain" - as illustrated by the 2010 Social Networking Map. Note the "Google Information Gathering Outposts". I guess the map will need to be redrawn to include Google+!

So, this week I'm preparing a social media guidelines draft, and reviewing staff profiles on LinkedIn. Here are some useful lists of policies and guidelines:

• Social Media Governance - a database of about 176 policies


• Only 29% Of Companies Have A Social Media Policy: Is Your Company At Risk?, by Jeff Bullas


• Enterprise: List of 40 Social Media Staff Guidelines, by Laurel Papworth

A personal favorite of mine is by SocialVoice. Its simplicity makes it concise, and its tone appeals to our better instincts. Check it out.

So, you can take the girl out of the library, but can you take the librarian out of the girl? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, I'll keep the name of this blog for now. After all, I've spent quite a few years building this brand.

Oh, yeah... Atzilut is level 85! Think I'll work on my worgen now. Play on!

Swimming in the sea of social media

I've had to stop reading about gaming, anthropology and sociology, while I work on a consulting job. I'm developing a social media campaign and training for a recruitment firm. Our first workshop is this Monday. I'm thoroughly saturated now in social media methodology. There's SO much information out there! The good news is there's such a glut of info that people can't sift through it. Enter Catherine stage right.

It's amazing how social media has developed in business and marketing. Quite fascinating, actually. Facebook can be a huge marketing tool. Check out one of the leaders in Facebook innovation, Mari Smith. She's got a YouTube channel, too. I found her through another Facebook guru, Amy Porterfield, and the Social Media Examiner. They are just two of the people I've been listening to this past week.

Before I landed this consulting gig, I picked up the book, Branding Yourself, by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Great information!

One of my teachers signed my high school yearbook with the words, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity"--a quote from H.D. Thoreau's Walden. It's been buzzing around in my mind this past week (at least); I think they are good words to keep in mind as I swim in the sea of social media.