Latino Rebranded: Social Media and Latinos

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.

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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!!!

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