Beyond the Elements of Style

Social Media for Readers and Writers

So let’s start our tour of social media with my favorite group of people—people who read and people who write! With some exceptional help from some of my colleagues at LinkedIn (a social network site you’ll find mentioned here), I’ve put together a list of social media sites you might want to check out. They’re not in any particular order, so don’t bother looking for one; perhaps you can see it as an example of the random nature of the Net!

Remember as you browse the first rule of social media: there’s no one-size-fits-all here. Some of these sites may interest you; many of them will not. And that’s as it should be, because you don’t want to spend all of your time online! Explore the sites at your leisure, see which ones seem to work for you, try them out. If you don’t like one site, move on.

And if you find more to add to the list, drop me an email at jcezanne@customline.com and let me know!

• Literature Map: Gnooks is a self-adapting community system based on the gnod engine. Discover new writers you will like, travel the map. of literature and discuss your favorite books and authors.
• Book Glutton: Read books online with other people—suggest books, discuss books, see who’s reading what. Sign on as a glutton and take the video tour!
• Library Thing: So if you feel a need to catalogue your personal library online, Library Thing is the place for you. You can do it here, and then connect with others whose libraries you like. Note that there’s a fee once you pass 200 books.
• Good Reads: Another book cataloguing site. Also offer some great lists and trivia. (As I write this, Twilight is simultaneously on the “best books ever” and “worst books ever” lists, so it’s even-handed!)
• Author’s Den: From the site: “While some of the other sites focus on readers, here’s one that focuses on authors as well. From the site: “The largest most vibrant free online literary community of authors and readers! Visited by 1,400,000+ readers/mo.” It claims that authors “willreach many readers” and that readers
  can “discover, interact, get personal, buy and read!”
• Red Room says that it’s “where the writers are,” and explains, “Red Room provides authors and members with free, easy-to-use, elegant online homes. It’s a place for the literary community to promote their work, express themselves, and connect with their favorite authors.”
• Swap Tree is a book- (and music-, DVD-, and video-game-) swapping community. Have a book you want to trade for another? This is the place for you!
• We Read: Ger personalized recommendations for books, share your recommendations with others. Includes discussion forums.
• Write Lit“aims to bring writers and readers together from all parts of the globe. It seeks to help the writer — technical, commercial, and literary — earn a living, and find audiences for his work. Furthermore, it aims to provide a venue for readers to share their passion for the written word.”
• Authonomy: This is a community sponsored by HarperCollins UK that “invites unpublished and self published authors to post their manuscripts for visitors to read online. Authors create their own personal page on the site to host their project – and must make at least 10,000 words available for the public to read. Visitors to authonomy can comment on these submissions – and can personally recommend their favourites to the community. authonomy counts the number of recommendations each book receives, and uses it to rank the books on the site. It also spots which visitors consistently recommend the best books – and uses that info to rank the most influential trend spotters.”
• Writers’ News/Writing Magazine: This is a singularly useful site, a clearinghouse for a number of different activities: competitions, classes, book discussions, forums, links … it’s all here.
• Bookworm: a blog that celebrates books and reading with lovely enthusiastic reviews by the author, Lubya Kably.
• Media Bistro: Though not strictly an author/reader sort of site, Media Bistro is a community that can be useful to writers looking to improve skills, get jobs, and connect with other media professionals. They have local chapters throughout the United States that offer get-togethers in person.
• Book Marketing Network, part of the whole Ning family of social networks, describes itself as being “for book authors, self-publishers, book publishers, publicists, marketers, and others involved in writing, publishing, and marketing books.” Includes, in true social media style, something for everyone—photos, videos, discussion boards, events, and blogs.
• The Book Place, also a Ning community, features a blog, podcasts, reviews, and discussion.
• Writers Digest: the online community associated with the grande dame of aspiring writers’ magazines, Writers Digest , the site offers some social networking but mostly supports the magazine. Online subscriptions are available.
• Gaia Community: once you join the community you’ll have access to the books section. Very useful if you’re interested in spirituality and healing topics.

In addition to the list above, there is a Facebook application called Visual Bookshelf that you can access from inside Facebook. It’s another community that shares reading lists and reviews.

So that’s it for now! I’ll update this list periodically, as community life on the Net is always changing, always growing … but this should get you started. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Social Networking for the Rest of Us

So by now you probably have a Facebook account. And you may have even tried Twitter (and not seen the point). Or you’ve lost parts of your life you’ll never get back again in the black hole of time that is StumbleUpon. And it’s all very interesting, but not exactly … applicable.

I’m here to say two things: yes, it is applicable and no, don’t give up yet.

One of the grandes dames of social networking is the virtual world known as Second Life. I know Second Life well, as I co-authored one of the chapters in Wiley’s Official Guide to Second Life. So you could say I wrote the book (or at least part of it!) on Second Life. Yet it took me what seemed like forever to learn my way around there, and then another long period of time before I got really involved.

I’d planned to use Second Life for fun only … but before I knew it, I was a writer-in-residence and figuring out ways to organize readings and get work “out there.” Because whatever your interest is, you’ll eventually find it in a social community.

Yes, a lot of people on Twitter mention their bathtub grouting or their choice of breakfast cereals more than anyone should want to share. But if you decided not to try any activity based solely on those who use it differently than you think you would, you might not do much at all in life.

So let’s give it a try. In the next few posts I’ll give you a beginner’s tour of some of the social networking sites that writers and word-people might find of interest. Try them out; some will be a good fit, some won’t. But you’ll never know until you try! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Let’s Talk Search!

It’s something I haven’t done lately … talk about, that is, though I’m doing plenty of search engine optimization these days, and for very good reasons: in a failing economy, customer/client/donor acquisition is more critial than ever, and yet budgets for doing so are smaller than ever. SEO offers a relatively low-cost way to get potential clients and customers to one’s website, and Customline Wordware is offering a number of recession-special SEO Lite packages.

But it’s not fun always working with the Big Three of search engines — Google, Yahoo! and MSN — so today I was delighted to come across this article that announces some new and interesting search engines. I looked at them with some trepidation (after all, who doesn’t remember the dazzling failure of Cuil?), but was pleased with what I saw. No, we won’t be optimizing for them anytime soon, but they’re great tools to keep tucked in the back of your mind as you roam the web.

I won’t rehash the article, but will note the names of the new search engines reviewed:

• Soovle
• facesaerch
• Tastekid
• fasteagle
• FanSnap
• compfight
• Kedricx

Check the article out and play around with the engine that interests you most. With Google’s domination of the search engine landscape, we often forget that there is more than one way to skin a cat. These (and my own perennial favorite, Kartoo) will challenge your boxed-in thinking. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

If Content is King in SEO, it Rules the Universe in SMM!

I often talk about content being king. I even have a monthly newsletter titled Limitless Content (sign up for it at http://www.customline.com), and for good reason: content is the point of the web. People go online to do a great many things – make purchases, meet friends, look up information, learn a language, sell an heirloom – and every one of those actions is predicated on there being some content on the site where they ultimately do whatever it is that they’re doing.

Every time Google dances and other SEO experts go swooning over page ranks and links and so on, I order another latte. I don’t care. Page rank is so 2005, folks, and links can be manipulated more than golf scores. But content – good, solid, reliable, authoritative, changing content – that’s what will bring visitors (and customers!) to a site.

The social media sites, no matter which one you choose to consider (and new ones spring up, literally, daily), are all about content. They’re frequented by people who are generally less educated but far more web-saavy than those who are attracted to pre-web 2.0 sites, and these users know all about links – and aren’t about to play that game. You can’t ask for links in this world, and you can’t buy links, either; you have to earn them.

And you earn them through great content. I’m starting to sense a theme here.

The social media world focuses on experience rather than on destinations. It focuses on connections rather than on sales pitches. And it values creativity above anything else. The best way to get noticed is to do something new, something cool, something insanely great – and tell somebody about it. Tell everybody about it.

Who do you tell? Ah, that’s the other catch. To market to these communities, you have to be part of the community. You cannot communicate to web 2.0 denizens unless you’re one of them, unless you’ve spent the time and taken the effort to be there. You have to grow a bit of a thick skin, for social media sites can feature some very mean individuals (read Digg for a few pages and you’ll see what I’m talking about); as is true everywhere, it is generally the people who know the least who attack the most. So you’re going to get some slingshots. You need to have humor and a sense of balance out here – it’s not for the faint of heart.

Let’s get back to content, though. Because social media has changed the way content is presented: even though it must be even better than ever in terms of quality, the quantity rules have changed:

• First, your content has to be bite-sized. Say what you have to say, say it well, remind people of what you just said, and get out. If you can’t do this well, hire someone who can (maybe even a copywriter like me!): it’s essential.
• Secondly, your bites need to be in a lot of different places. Study the sites. (I’m not going to list them here; those lists are available elsewhere – check out SEOMoz’s fine articles on social media marketing, as an example.) Everyone wants something a little different. Modify your bite-sized bits of content to suit the specific audience.
• Finally, and this is where all your old creaky SEO skills come in: change content. All the time. Follow up your bite-sized nuggets with other ones. Experiment with doing a series of such nuggets on a given site. Keep creating this great content and tossing the articles, lenses, and tidbits out into the social media you select. They won’t all stick; but some will.

Remember that you’re not going to make any sales out here: social media sites aren’t going to buy anything from you. But put out content that is creative, dynamic, and intriguing, and if you’re any kind of decent marketer, you’ll draw people in to where you want them to be … and encourage them to do what you want them to do.

Do that, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!