Personal or Professional

Ryan    Uncategorized     Personal Blog, Professional Blog, SeaTac, SMO, Social Media

So I’m in deep thought in whether or not I want to continue my endeavors at RyanJin.me on a strictly personal, a strictly professional, or a combination of both approach. I know there are advantages to all options, as well as disadvantages, but at this stage in my professional career, the choice is a little hard… that is without starting a new blog from the very beginning.

For one, I think my new found interest in Social Media, Social Media Optimization, and so on, is a great reason to go professional. On the other hand, well really, on the same hand, Social is all about personalization… making the personal, professional. That by itself is reason enought to do kinda both I’d imagine. Unless I want to bash, swear, and totally $&@# up my image by using bad language and links. I guess I won’t do that. Damn. Does anyone have any ideas on proactive ways of splitting your personal and professional blog posts without starting a brand new blog? I’d take any advice I can get.

Any ways, this week couldn’t have come at a better time. Leaving in a day for Seattle, Anniversary in a week, some cool surprises for Andrea, I’m feeling good right now. Just got to get through a few days at work and then I’m gone for a week and a half! Although I do have to face the music that is the snowy SeaTac Airport.. as well as the snowy Bellingham Airport. Well hopefully we actually see the snowy Bellingham airport. Otherwise.. not quite sure what. I’m hating just thinking about it. If you want to see some up to the minute reports for people directly at SeaTac, check out.. Twitter Search. Makes me kinda scared.

Any ways, more later.

Peace

White Elephant, And December Shopping

Ryan    Uncategorized     Christmas, Shopping, White Elephant

Just finished up with marketing’s white elephant gift exchange. Not too shabby I might add. I remember one year, I got some Sudafed for my gift. Although I have to say that it came in handy a year later when I got a pretty server cold. Oh well. This year, I came out with some English breakfast tea, some cookies, and some swizzle sticks. Yeah not the coolest of things, but not as bad as a $10 stationary set. Now to finish off the day.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate shopping in December. Well generally speaking, shopping  is pretty boring, traffic is usually horrible, and you end up spending way more than you think you were going to spend. Add December into the picture. Oh gawd. But I do have to get some stocking stuffers and some periphials for my video presents for my family. Hopefully they’ll all be there and I won’t need to go do some hunting. I’ve got a plan set out, that should help in optimizing time and traffic. We’ll see.

Other than that, this week is finally come to a close, and with 5 days until Andrea and I head back to Washington, we’ve got lots on our plates to finish. Also, the snow. Please let there be no hassles or derailments with our flights.  Last thing I want is to miss Christmas with the families.

Peace.

1 Week and 2 Days!

Ryan    Uncategorized     Apple, Christmas, MacBook, Video Editing

Can you believe I go home in less than 2 weeks? I can’t! I’m incredibly excited for this year’s holiday season. I’m not quite sure why, but may have something to do with being in Phoenix for the past 4 months or so. I’m ready for home cooked food, family, and friends.

Any ways, that’s pretty much the main thing thats on my mind right now. Oh and how I’ve spent some 15 hours or so making my Christmas presents for everyone and having the hard drive thats saving it all totally crash on me. That’s keeping me up at night as well. No problems. I’m going to an Apple store this afternoon to try and pull all the info off of it, or fix it.. whatever it takes. I’ll tell you this for sure though, if the Apple ‘Geniuses’ can’t do diddly squat for my problem, I’m spending the next week coving some lost ground. Late nights, and early mornings… more work, and more stress, just what I need. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Why Your F2F Ratio Determine's a Business/Person's Involvement in Social

Ryan    Uncategorized     Social Marketing, Social Media

I’ve recently seen some situations where some individuals and businesses on Twitter vary the way in which they socialize with their followers and fellow tweeters. Starbucks has taken it upon themselves to follow anyone who starts following them (Don’t quote me on this, I just know they did it to me). WordPress on the other hand, has not a single person it is following.

From a mathematical perspective, Starbucks Followers to Followed ratio is close to 1. It’s actually greater than 1 if you want the truth. WordPress’ F2F ratio is, you guessed it, a whopping 0. Good, bad?

In a recent 2 tweet conversation I had with @Starbucks, they mentioned that “@ryanjin I think it comes down to how much engagement with the community you’re looking for”. A perfect explanation. In this thing we call social, isn’t engagement the overarching priority? If we used Twitter only as a means to convey our news, events, or press releases, we aren’t gaining any kind of value to even having it. Yet, WordPress has over 14,000 followers. I guess they’re looking for that kind of news source.

Back to what Starbucks is saying though. Social IS all about the engagement with the community. Listening to what others have to say, learning and hearing what trends people are talking about! I suppose there is a breaking point where you’re just going to get flooded with crap loads of Tweets every second, but that’s a whole other story. If a business in inclined to actively invest or explore a Social Media strategy, they need to grasp onto the technologies main features and harness the full potential without looking both pretentious or taking in any input from their audience.

Back to the math… I don’t really think you can’t justify an adequate ratio for a tweeter. There can be averages, and there can be norms, but for everyone’s social experience, the ratios will be different. Too high, you’re looking pretty spammy. Too low, you’re looking pretty pretentious. Exactly one?…. well you’re just looking a little too perfect. Only you will be able to manage and explain your F2F ratio. It’s all a matter of personality and being social right?

Peace.

Social Media Outsourcing (New SMO?)

Ryan    Uncategorized     Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Outsourcing

Just finished a nice discussion on Twitter regarding the benefits and feasibility of Outsourcing Social Media. Is it possible? Sure. Would you do it? No.

So why would I not outsource social media?

Would you let someone manage your own personal contacts, personal conversations, and personal business? Maybe. Would you let them manage it if they weren’t affiliated with the business/you? Probably not. Social media agencies are a possibility in the future, but the way they do business would have to be closely similar to consultants. When you let somebody else take charge of your brand, your image, and your projected personality, you risk looking phony, looking cheap, and losing a good chunk of your qualified audience.

Say for example a company tweeted on a product release. People are going to ReTweet that, reply to it, begin to follow the Tweeter, etc. etc. If you don’t have personalization behind that tweet that is ready for a bombardment of questions, followers, or whatever else, the image of that Tweeter will begin to suffer. They don’t work for So and So. Why should I trust this source? Let’s take our business elsewhere where we’ve done business before. They are more personable.

Agree or Disagree? Why?

Peace.

1000 YouTube Views!

Ryan    Uncategorized     YouTube

So my video, the Rihanna/Michael Jackson mashup I made, hit 1000 views today. Yippee! I know it’s nothing, but with my lonely video, and my youtube virginity, it’s kinda exciting. So currently, I’ve got 1000 views, 5 comments, and 0 video responses. I’m feeling pretty good for just making a mash up of some cool music.

Maybe sometime I’ll make a new video of some cool sheat or something. Maybe a movie! That’d be ridiculous. It’d be fun and awesome, but ridiculous.

Peace

Subjective Search Engine Optimization

Ryan    Uncategorized     Organic Search, Social Media, SSEO, Subjective Search

With all the recent news about how we’re looking at more subjective search engine results, universal results, so on and so forth, is there a need to revamp the way we look at SEO? Of course.

There are a few main things subjective search will end up doing. First, the amount of eyes that each website will reach will decrease. Once search engines can correctly distinguish your potential interests and search habits, the more refined and targeted those search results will be. While this might sound negative, you should also consider that… secondly, the people that DO see your results will be a hellva lot more targeted and interested in your results. Also, with more targeted and subjective search results, there is the huge possibility of decreasing ‘gray area’ competitors from encroaching on your selected term.. and meaning as well.

So what does this mean? While today we optimize sites for keywords, the importance of secondary keywords, placement, and structure will get even more important in the coming months. Even though we are pretty hazy on what Google has up it’s sleeves, we know for a fact that customized search results are going to become a standard. Take a look at your Search History in Google, and what do you think Google think’s about you? Are you a professional searcher? Novelty searcher? Maybe even a porno searcher? Good luck trying to find relevant search results for your “rear entry” or “milk jug” search terms. Nonetheless, if you can gauge and understand what your audience or potential audience is searching for or has the tendency to search for, the more power to you. I think in general this just makes the role of an SEO or SSEO more engaging and less repetitive. Go out and do the fun research yourself, and learn what it’s like to be a real marketing professional.

Technology is good, but with the way our trends are pointing, it’s changing heavily and fast. In combination with Social Media, Pay Per Click, Universal Search, and tons more, the possibilities for brand recognition, name recognition, and potential client/customer reach are endless. If you don’t know how your target is searching, you shouldn’t be in the field.

Peace

Twitter Feed, RSS, and Legal Issues

Ryan    Uncategorized     Rss, Social Media, Twitter

So with everyone Tweeting these days, a few things should begin to make their way to the back of our heads. The more people retweeting news, stories, links to downloads, links to store products, etc, the more there could be legal issues down the road? I mean, a whole slew of copyright and trademark laws are at stake, and while everything we’re doing seems harmless, could it be illegal one day to pick up affiliate pay for linking to our favorite Amazon.com downloads?

That being said, I think the possibility of people misusing Twitter is quite high. While there aren’t too many restrictions for it’s use, I could see someday how the whip will need to be cracked on frivolous uses. It already can be seen. Have you had followers begin to follow you only to find out that their account is under investigation? What would be the point in following lots of people?

In essence, don’t add anything to the Twitter community if you don’t have anything original to add. If you find a way to leverage your position, use it correctly and don’t overdo it. The more notoriety you have down the line, the more you open yourself up to scrutiny later on.

Peace.

Social Media Labs… A Work in Progress?

Ryan    Uncategorized     Social Media, Social Media Labs

Another topic that stemmed from my lunch with EL today was the issue regarding our plans for a Social Media Labs site. Articles, blog entries, tools, tips, you name it, we want to incorporate it. Have any good ideas? Have any good URLs?

We think this can be a great potential for the Social Media position as well as for developing new and intriguing theories, ideas, and strategies.

Anybody know of a decent website management/blogging solution besides wordpress?

Peace

The Importance of Content

Ryan    Uncategorized     Content, Social Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

After a spicy lunch with EL this afternoon, we’ve both come to the agreement that content is the most important aspect at successful web marketing/social media strategies. What do I mean by this… If you’re just ‘ReTweeting’ everything from someone else, copying links from blogs not your own, or something similar, you aren’t providing a viable service/product/resource to followers. You might be for a short while, but eventually, people will catch on, and do their news surfing themselves. Not the way to go.

Instead, if you focus on the content… making videos, actually writing in your blog, supplying a real service, then you have something to market and socialize about. So what does this all boil down to? Social media is so new and is still in the wee early stages of development that anyone who tells you they know what it is to know about social, is lying to you. Give it another year or so, and you will definately know who and where social is going.

Social search, mapping, cacheing, filtering… this stuff is totally unchartered when it comes to social media. I believe that in the next few months, you’ll begin to see a more dynamic breed of programs and applications out there that really start to push social media.. and dare I say, social advertising/marketing to the next level.

Peace.