Hello, My Name is Drew, and Who Are You?

Once a social media community has gotten rolling a bit, it can be tough to keep track of who all is actually following you on Twitter, who reads what you are writing on your blog, and what kinds of people make up your community. It's like a party - you may be having a conversation with a few people on one side of the room while a few new people come in the back door unnoticed. While it can be tough to keep up, it is so important! Google Analytics can only tell you so much.

I want to take this opportunity to reintroduce myself and ask you a few questions. My name is Drew and I work at Axiom Marketing Communications in Minneapolis. We work with a variety of clients on marketing, event promotion, brand management, and social media tactics as well as writing this daily social media blog. In my free time, I enjoy reading, playing broomball during winter, discovering and listening to new music, and digging into LOST. I still have a lot to learn about social media and marketing, but reading and writing blogs as well as engaging in the online community have taught me a lot.

Now about you. Here are a few questions you could answer (any or all):

- What's your name, where are you from, where do you work?
- Favorite hobbies, current projects?
- Favorite blogs or books that you would recommend to others?
- How can we improve Daily Axioms for you? What would you like to see us write about more? Less?

The community at Daily Axioms is so important to us and we truly want to engage and get to know each one of you. Think of it like a party where we can all get to know each other a little more.

To Ask Or Not To Ask: That Is The Question

I think we would all agree it is important to make it easy for people to sign up for our blog's RSS feeds and give multiple options (Reader or email), but I think there are some differing opinions about actively asking for people to subscribe.

My favorite radio station, The Current, is an indie public radio station based in Minneapolis. This week they are having a member drive for financial support. The station is completely funded by donations and therefore depends on the growth of their member base. In its 4 years on the air, word of mouth has spread the station all over the world and their model has been deemed a successful model for how independent and community-based radio is done. Of course you can donate any time, but during member drives, most of The Current's budget for the year comes in.

I've seen blogs go with a few different options for recruiting new readers. Some have their own type of "member drive," occasionally reminding readers in a post to take the next step and become a more involved member of the community by signing up for the RSS feed (or making a comment). Some make a clear push by including a "Did you like what you read, then sign up here" type of approach at the top or bottom of each new blog post. Others prefer to not make outright requests for new readers, but let the community spread word if they like what they read.

I asked "Ask for new RSS members or not?" on Twitter and here's what a few people said:So what do you think? What's your approach?

Getting Caught Up

I just got back from a week vacation. I was almost completely away from the internet the entire week - no email, RSS, blogs, Twitter, or Facebook. Aside from about 1 hour during the week in which I checked my personal email, everything else was on hold and I knew it was growing. When I came into the office this morning, I had several hundred emails, over 1500 RSS feeds, and a whole week of Twitter messages to untangle.

A few observations:

• I ended up just deleting or marking lots of emails and articles right away in order to bail the water out of the boat quicker. While most days this tends to take place on a smaller and slightly slower scale, I found my "scanning eyes" were moving quite quickly. Lesson learned: Maybe there are lots of things that I don't really need to read even during a normal week.
  
• After visiting a few sites, I was able to establish a picture of some of the things I had missed. I watched TweetWeek to get a recap of some of Twitter happenings. I scanned PopURLs to look for top stories that I may have missed. Lesson learned: Sites that compile and recap can be just as helpful as reading it all yourself, but takes a lot less time.
  
• Although I tried to eliminate the clutter and ignore the "echo chamber" effect of social media buzz, there was still a good amount to read. Lesson learned: There is no way around the fact that you must be "in" social media to understand what is going on.
• After getting somewhat caught up, an interesting thought popped into my mind: Did I really miss anything? Through reading recaps, eliminating the waste, and ignoring the echo chamber, I was able to effectively catch up in a fraction of the time I normally would have. It seems like there is not only a lot of repeating going on in social media, but there may also be a lot of things that can waste your time. Possible lesson learned: Maybe a week away isn't as detrimental as I thought it could be.

A few questions for you -
Where do you go to get caught up when you get behind on news, social media happenings, etc?
Could you be away from Twitter/Facebook/etc for a week and not implode?
If you were away one week, what would you really miss that couldn't be remedied with a little catch up?

How To Catch All of Your ReTweets and Mentions On Twitter

Did you know that the @Replies Tab in Twitter only lists the Tweets that begin with "@yourname" but doesn't include any tweets that contain your handle inside of the Tweet? For example - the following Tweet (although it contains @axiompr) would not show up in my @Replies tab because the @ isn't at the beginning:

If you aren't watching your stream constantly, there is no way to catch everytime someone ReTweets you or mentions your name. There is probably a lot you are missing out on. How can you be sure to not let these valuable interactions slip by unnoticed? The answer is simple and will help you become a much better Twitter user.

Step 1. Go to www.search.twitter.com . This great tool will allow you to search for people who are talking about what you are interested in, which in this case is your handle.

Step 2. Search for your term. When I search for "axiompr" (my handle is @axiompr) the search will bring up all the times "axiompr" has been Tweeted. This will find not only my own Tweets, but those times when someone else ReTweeted me or used my handle in the middle of their Tweet.

Step 3. Click "Feed This Query" at the top right of the page. Now, anytime that someone ReTweets you or mentions your handle within their Tweet, you will catch it. This is also a great way to be alerted on other key terms, to keep track of hashtag conversations, and to become aware of opportunities that you may have not known about.

Twitter vs. Google Reader

One look at social media icon Gary Vaynerchuk’s Twitter account and he’ll tell you to keep social media simple. But do some devices make things easier or harder to optimize your search for quality content?

Clearly, Google Reader and Twitter don’t have much in common besides the fact that both boast quick notification or real-time updates. Taking a tour around Twitter can result in a whole new flow of information, friends, and lovers of your brand. You can filter through tweets that appeal and don’t appeal to you and choose whether or not to respond. It’s thread heaven for tweet-ups or web conferences now. Questions can be answered quickly because it’s quick format. Ugly interface, however.

Now, we examine Google Reader. Sure it’s really helpful to aggregate all of your blog and news content for your own personal Google account, but what about getting more out of your experience? You are so limited to what you can explore on Reader that perhaps RSS is really not simple at all. You see a number of entries pop up in the window. You read through them on the same page and think, “Is the blog worth a second look?” Perhaps that blogger was having a bad day and decided to rant instead of praise. Chances are you’ll remove their feed. After all, this is too much information and you’re crunched for time. Well, at least the interface has improved.

So for RSS, I’d hit up Twitter and check out what other people are promoting with links. Suddenly, you’re whole niche becomes a whole lot bigger and much more creative. My best content take-away has always come from Twitter.

What about you?

Your Online Democracy

Democracy is happening online, because every time a comment is made—change is imminent or entirely avoided. Today’s marketing is customer service and though this isn’t new to the digital PR attendees of the world, it still sends the majority.

A person’s comment is now so much more powerful than what a marketing research team gathers from a paid-for focus group. Yes, those TV ads do say these people weren’t paid for the ad, but who wouldn’t love having their mug on TV? I raise my hand in embarrassment.

The new integrated strategy that should be part of every campaign (starting with research) is comment moderation. The tactic-- subscribing to the RSS feed comments pertaining to your client, your client’s product or service, and topic of interest for your targeted media contacts. Boy would that save you time and energy in place of your exhaustive search on Google’s front page.

Consider scrolling below those USA Today or New York Times articles, those blogs tied to top 50 publications and reading the 21 or so complaints from customers who have really experienced the journalist’s cutting jest about a service or this-just-in bad news. It may come as a shock to hear that your customers don’t want flare; they want simple. In immediate response, you change those key messages and give your product, service or simple PSA announcement (are those still happening?) a makeover.

It’s time to listen to your customers online. Remember they are your audience and can turn to or away from you—if you don’t hear them.

Put Your Company on Twitter

Not every company should be on Twitter, but the vast majority of them should be even if they aren't promoting their brand.

Top 5 reasons your company should be on Twitter:

5. Follow trends (Especially trending topics)
4. Get feedback (Listen to your customers complaints and praises. Act on them.)
3. It makes a great customer service tool (Check out ComcastCares)
2. Set up an RSS feed from twitter to track conversations (Very easy to do)
1. Be proactive in the conversation (Find out what your customers want!)

Clay Aiken and Citizen Journalists

She may not have been the first woman to announce this (Rosie O'Donnell), but a stay-at-home mom blogger outed Clay Aiken before the media did. Featuring baby news and celebrity gossip, this stereotypical mom blog featured a quick blurb about the happy couple's baby boy and the surrogate mother involved. Then People, USA Today and a number of radio stations proclaimed: "I'm gay, says Clay Aiken." And it was all this week. Her post: months earlier.

It just goes to show that bloggers are better at keeping up on things than even the hottest celebrity critics... and any beat reporter imaginable. Social media and networking devices are paving the way for citizen journalists and the new flow of communication will only continue. Bloggers, YouTubers, Twitterers, and Facebookers are reaping great benefits. Black and white for a group, event, or product otherwise overlooked-- if only attached to a news release-- isn't bad at all. I'm keeping my eye out on you, America, as both a participant and creator of opportunity.

But if you do consult a blog source, you might want to check out frequency of comments, number of unique visitors per month, and if they're blogging about their bad day more than once-- remove them from your RSS feeds.

RSS Apple App

My favorite RSS reader from the App Store has to be Manifesto. I have tried a few other ones, including just the standard Google reader, but Manifesto is king so far.

- Very clean and organized App
- 3 different sections: Feeds, New, Flagged.

And the best feature:

When looking at a feed post, with the touch of one button, you can view the website version of the post. This is a very useful feature since a lot of feeds want you to visit the actual website, so you only get a preview of the post in the feed.

Overall rating: A-