Latino Rebranded: Latinos and Social Media

Subtitle:  “Give me back that Filet O’ Fish, give me that fish.”

There’s a common piece of advice to “fish where the fish are.”  While no doubt this is a great short term strategy, but eventually the resource will dry up.  Why?  Because, soon enough everyone will start fishing in the same spot!

There’s some recent data released by HitWise that shows Facebook touting 50% of web visits and Twitter only showing 1% which may cause people to run to Facebook in crowds.  (Look at my other post from today for technical reasons why this data is not reliable.)

1.	Facebook	50.15%
2.	YouTube	15.21%
3.	MySpace	15.08%
4.	Tagged	1.16%
5.	Twitter	1.14%

So, you look at the above chart and see the heavy usage of Facebook, and you run off to establish your presence.  What’s wrong with that, you may ask…you reason: most of the traffic is there, so I want to go where I will have more return.

Personally, I don’t believe in chasing traffic.  I believe in making traffic, come to me.  Chasing traffic will drive you nuts (traffic is the web currency equivalent of money).  Rather, identify your strengths, develop what makes you unique, create value and as a side effect traffic will follow.

Promoting and networking are fine, but without taking a self inventory and honing your assets you’ll never break away from the crowd.  You may reap the rewards of hard work, but you’ll won’t make YOUR mark or unique contribution.

If you must go or do what others are doing, then it’s okay to do so for a time.  However, identify the time to breakaway and make your own inroads, plans, conclusions, methods, philosophy…make your own rules.  You’ll never have to worry about it being too crowded, because no one can ever do what you do best – and that’s being you!

Being your true self, is the key to generating traffic.

What do you think?  Am I wrong…half wrong – half right?  How do you generate lasting traffic?

Popularity: 19% [?]

Subtitle: Levels of Truth in Data Representation of Social Networking Sites

The recent data by HitWise that rated social networking sites, ranks Facebook as #1 with 50% traffic, and Twitter as #5 with a mere 1% is a perfect example of a data presented at a certain level of truth, leaving questions at all other levels.

1.	Facebook	50.15%
2.	YouTube	15.21%
3.	MySpace	15.08%
4.	Tagged	1.16%
5.	Twitter	1.14%

Here are the problems:

1. What counts as a visit on Facebook?  (Ex: If you click through 50 profiles, does that count as 50 visits?)
2. Twitter users for the most part use 3rd party applications to manage their accounts such as Seesmic Desktop and Hootsuite, not to mention mobile device access.  Surely, this type of access is not counted as a “visit.”
3. There are other uses for twitter such as search (again 3rd party apps can come into play), or just sit and watch your custom “lists” or groups and use them as a news feed – “visits” here do not account for this invaluable feature.
4. The specialized niches that each network serves (think LinkedIn), is severely undervalued by presenting this data as meaningful.
5. What type of traffic are going to these sites?  What are they doing there?  How is this important to me or my business?

Each point begs pertinent questions – what is the value of other networks?  Are visits the measure of usefulness?  How are the sites used?  Who is visiting these sites and what are they doing?  Nothing outlined by HitWise, comes close to providing answers.

The web is no different than any terrain – the more you know, the better you can use it to your advantage.  Thinking through what is presented here, we come to important conclusions – this is called being media literate – and can leverage the information in our favor.

Did you initially interpret the data as I did…that is, Facebook rules?

(In a little while, I’ll be posting another piece that uses the same data above. However, the discussion is about why you should not chase traffic, but make it come to you.)

Popularity: 17% [?]

With the announcement of Google Buzz, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Comments feature in blogs.  I don’t want to say that Buzz is necessarily bad for blogs, but it can de-augment a very powerful pillar of blogging – the Comments section.

Let me back up a little.

In October, I talked about the importance of publishing your content on a blog that you own versus a social media site like Facebook or Twitter.  I subtitled the post as “Centralized Me,” to build on the concept of concentrating your content to one main platform.

The Comment’s section of a blog is the site’s social component, for without it a blog is only a new media site with a one way conversation void of reader interaction.

Google Buzz, in essence does to your blog’s comments what other social media sites does to your content – spreads it far and wide.  If readers use Buzz the exposure of your blog will be multiplied, which is every blogger’s dream.  But I have to ask, will those who use Buzz also comment on your blog?

Latino Rebranded integrates a button called TweetMeme and if you look, more people Tweet posts than actually comment.  On Facebook, my followers comment or “like” my blog posts, as well as Networked Blogs – a Facebook application that delivers new posts to people’s inbox and utilizes an RSS feed as well.   Now Buzz, can be added to the list.  (I just had the thought that an opportunity exists for a program to pool together all these outside conversations and dump them into one spot – the Comment section.  Maybe it already exists?)

Taking all of the above into consideration, the ‘push-button’ interaction that they all offer will subtly deter comments because in the mind of the reader they already have commented – in the form a tweet, a buzz or a ‘like’.

I’m not saying to not use any of these services, because they are great tools that leverage your blog’s exposure – and that’s what you want!  But, with the awareness of conversations happening outside your Comment section you can start thinking of ways to harness them for the benefit of your blog.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Yesterday, I posted a piece on Social Media Literacy (SML) and talked about how to identify some characteristics of an ill intentioned communication in social media. 

Some of the examples listed showed how others may try to take advantage of your account on Twitter. Complimenting yesterday’s post, I found a great article that talks about how an insider exploited Facebook to gather information on unsuspecting users – and I’ve seen those ads!

So, go ahead and take a look at that article it’s full of a lot of information…and…WYB!!!

Popularity: 14% [?]