''Part of the beauty of such a system is that people are going to write stuff other people don't agree with.''

Medium was largely talked about a couple of months ago. Another social network, which is a kind of compilation of Blogger and Twitter, is a baby product of Evan Williams and Biz Stone, former employees from Blogger and Twitter. The service was  opened in beta version for some early subscribers about 2 weeks ago.

And I happened to be one of them. Woohoo!  I haven't been excited about the idea itself that much since Pinterest launched. While Pinterest compelled to my consumption-self (come on, it's not really about lofty matters), Medium compels to my high-quality-self.

Overview

Basically it's a writing and reading platform with nothing extra.  It's as simple as Twitter is but with a new format. While Twitter limits you and makes you think carefully about what you want to say, Medium gives you freedom to express your thoughts just the way you like.

Everything which is simple easily becomes addictive for Social Media maniacs. It's not a sensational thought but you might keep it in your mind before investigating Medium deeper and being caught in his powerful network of simplicity and information richness.

When you log in with your Twitter account (quite an easy way, ha?) if you hover your mouse to the letter “M” on the top of the page you can see a brief menu where each point is logical and quite understandable.  However, some may turn to be key points for personal and professional use. Read more »

Do you remember how scared you were when you first learned how to swim? Do you remember how exactly your body attempted to move and react to a changing surrounding? First you were probably panicking, and then you were trying to move just as if you were touching the ground. Finally you gave up and learned to do it quite the other way round. You developed a new muscle memory and realized that swimming and walking have very little in common but both activities can be equally fun.

Practically any social media strategy has a resembling life circle. Firstly you don't have a clue what's this all Twitter/Facebook/Google+ is about and want to run away to cold-calling, constant spam emails and sales pitches like my-name-is-Jeff-and-we-guarantee-you-number-one-position-in-Google-in-two-weeks-or-your-money-back. Then you're trying to do Social Media just as if it were any other old traditional type of Marketing, but the problem is that it's not old, it's not traditional and it's not straight-forward. Eventually you learn how to do, what I personally call, the right thing and become more or less decent in Social Media, but that's not what I am going to talk about.
The transition from each phase is painful, scary and soaked with sweat. The goal of this article is trying to understand what we are or were all doing wrong on the second base (I mean SMM, not love affairs).

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Earlier this week, Tom Webster’s readings got me thinking of spam.

Huge bags of digital trash get dumped on us with annoying regularity. Sometimes the bags are closed, and we simply discard them all with a click - something I practice daily with email junk.

But in some cases it's hard to spot trash. Take Twitter, a hotbed for gullible social media explorers and intricate spam networks, as an example. If you don't get good at spotting spammers, and spotting them quickly, they will get the better of you. You may leave Twitter altogether, disillusioned, confused and humiliated.

To not let that happen, let's examine most glaring signs of Twitter spam.

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Take 3 social media dudes – A, B and C. Dude A has got 1,000 followers, dude B has around 3000 and dude named C has a whopping 35,000 followers. Who is more important? Surely it's the cool mister C?

Photo credit: Garry Knight via Flickr

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Somehow I just can't picture Joe the marketer making bank on Pinterest. Repinning and liking pins? Sure. Making money and driving traffic to his site? Nope. Don't see it happening. Here's why.

"I want to pin!"

Meet Joe. An online marketer blogging about tech, with a decent following on Twitter, Facebook and (maybe even) Google+.

For the past few months he keeps reading about this Pinterest thing. It's making headlines all over the place. Mashable can't stop talking about these exciting Pinterest stats. A look at Compete alone is worth a million words. Joe is pumped. He is so ready to pin.

Question is how does Joe's pinning bring money for his biz? Read more »

"You like talking to people. Why don't you do social media stuff for us?" my boss asked one morning. "Why not," was my first thought. "Holy sh***," was my second... This post is about my Twitter journey with links to the most useful social media posts I found in 2011, and keep on finding in 2012. Let's delve right in!

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